


Resilient

by CharityLambkin



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Incredible Hulk - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Bruce Banner, Captivity, Comic Book Science, Depression, Evil Tony Stark, Extremis, Extremis Tony Stark, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Non-Sexual Slavery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Science Bros, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-02 11:22:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4058152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharityLambkin/pseuds/CharityLambkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Aldrich have built AIM from the ground up, but Extremis is proving tougher than either man expected.  Then, one day, Aldrich buys a new test subject from the U.S. Army, and Tony's day gets a lot more interesting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, wow. So I thought I was having an off week. Then I DELETED MY STORY. I didn't even know that I could do that, but this wouldn't even rank in the top 5 dumb things I've done.
> 
> But..but..the tragedy...I lost all the comments. All that time that my wonderful, kind readers have taken to give advice or just say that they're enjoying the story. That part makes me cry.
> 
> So here's the story as it was so far, because at least AO3 sent me a copy of the story I stupidly deleted.

 

Tony Stark tapped his fingers against the water-ringed walnut tabletop in time to the numbers flicking by on the tablet screen. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen million and climbing. A slow smile crept across his sharp features as the tapping sped up.

How he loved this part. The culmination of weeks—months—of planning, drafting, testing all ending in the glorious thrill of watching the world bid away its meager wealth for his weapon designs. On the table today was his new repulsor tech missile system. He didn’t even have a chance to post a demonstration video before the bidding started.

Tony settled back against the leather headrest as the zeros ticked by and the bidding slowed. He took a deep drink from his scotch in salute. North Korea had dropped out, but Hydra and The Ten Rings were still at it. Tony sneered. Nazi gold and opium fortunes were all the same to him.

He looked out the window, but there was nothing but blue sky and a wash of white clouds beneath. The repulsor-powered jet cruised steadily, and Tony had to lean his head against the bulkhead to hear the faint hum of the engine. The mechanical whir was reassuring, soothing enough to fall asleep. He probably should sleep. The excitement of the last few days kept him awake, though he never really slept anyway.

But every time he closed his eyes, he saw the text from Killian across the screen: Come to Iron Works. Extremis breakthrough.

****

“No! Uh-uh. Absolutely not. This is a violation of my privacy!”

Killian glanced over his shoulder and leveled him with an “oh please Tony” look before turning his attention back to the adamantium-reinforced cell he had installed right in the middle of Tony’s innermost workshop.

“You aren’t even using this one, except to house your…tin man,” Killian said, sweeping his hand towards the half-finished cybernetic armor, swinging silently from its chains like a broken puppet.

Tony scowled. “So what? There are dozens of buildings in this compound. Pick another one.”

Killian leaned against the glass and sighed as if he were frustrated with a small child. “This is where you keep the tiny nuclear reactors, isn’t it?”

The scowled deepened. No one was supposed to know about that. “No one knows about that.”

There was another “oh please Tony” look. “I take it this room is sealed against radiation leaks and large-scale blasts?”

“It is.”

Killian smiled that beautiful, perfectly laboratory-crafted smile and tossed a tablet to Tony. “Read the file.”

Tony took the tablet and backed away a few steps, towards the darkened part of the workshop where the armor hung. The file was already opened, so he expanded it across the room’s holographic projectors.

Suddenly the air was filled with the image of a very large—and very angry—green monster crushing cars and bellowing into the camera while men in military uniforms shot at him. The bullets bounced off his green hide like Airsoft pellets.

The tablet was heavy in his hands, so he let it drop as he crossed the room back to the glass cage. He looked inside at the naked figure curled tightly on the cot, deep in a drugged sleep. The man was not old, but he was still on the downward slope of middle age, hair graying and face lined even when he was passed out cold. He was thin to the point of gaunt, with a stray dog kind of look, knees pulled up tight against his chest in an attempt to protect his vitals. A wide silver collar encircled his neck—a gamma dampener, Killian had said. Tony glanced from the man to the image on the screen, and back again. He couldn’t believe the two beings were the same person…creature…whatever.

Killian’s arm snaked around his shoulders, and his breath was warm as he leaned in close. “He figured it out, Tony. He stabilized the effects of the mutation and _changed his DNA._ And we’re going to find out how he did it.”

Tony squared his shoulders, and Killian took it as a cue to back off. But Tony was already too distracted with possibility to bother much with Killian. His mind whirred with the implications of what lay in front of him and he couldn’t help but glance at the armor. If he could program the nanobots to mimic the stabilization mechanism…whatever that was…he could make them do whatever he wanted. He looked again at the forlorn figure in the cage. More than anything, he looked tired.

“Where’d you get him from?” Tony asked.

Killian picked the tablet up off the floor and flicked over to what looked like a contract. “I bought him from the U.S. Army.”

Tony’s smirk was back. “So you mean _I_ bought him from the Army.”

Killian’s oily smile faltered. He hated being reminded that he was nothing but the business face of the company. Without Tony’s genius inventions and family fortune to back it, Advanced Ideas Mechanics would go down in flames.

So, naturally, Tony reminded him every chance he got.

“He’s AIM property now,” Killian assured. “The boys in brass got everything they could use out of him. They didn’t know what to do with him. He’s a liability. They practically paid me to take him off their hands.”

Tony crouched down to get a closer look, as if he were looking at a lizard in a pet store terrarium. “We should move him out of the country. There are laws against slavery here.”

“That’s the beauty of the deal, Stark. He’s _not human_.”

Tony didn’t want to turn around and see Killian’s face. Something about the thrill in his voice made his stomach drop. But there was his hand on Tony’s shoulder again, and it burned even through his wool suit, so Tony straightened then stood and turned, tugging his jacket into place as he shrugged off the hand.

“All the more reason to keep him somewhere other than my damned workshop!”

“All the more reason to keep him in the most secure location possible. I suggest you use one of the other buildings in your expansive compound for your workshop.”

Killian cocked his head to the side in the way he had that meant the conversation was over, and Tony knew he was going to have to build another facility to house their new arrival unless he wanted a fucking roommate.

He would start construction tomorrow. Until then…

“What the hell am I supposed to do with him?”

Killian smiled. He knew he had won. For now.

“Keep him drugged,” Killian suggested. “And don’t make him angry.”

  
 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Once Killian stopped rattling on and on about his plans, he left Tony alone with this…this…he glanced down at the file back in his hand…Banner. Bruce Banner.

Tony tapped on the glass. Nope. Banner was still out cold. Would be for quite a while, if Tony read the chart correctly. He put the tablet down and systematically examined the cage. There was a single cot bolted to the floor and a sink attached to a toilet, all solid stainless steel without any of the plumbing exposed. That was it. There wasn’t even a blanket on the cot.

As austere as the interior of the cage was, the exterior seemed to be built pretty solidly, even by Tony’s standards. The graphene-reinforced glass was thick and all the joins were adamantium-vibranium alloy. The door and the frame were also adamantium, and towards the bottom, there was a single hatch a few inches high and less than a foot across. For food. Or something.

Fuck. Was he supposed to feed him? What did Killian expect him to do with a naked guy in his workshop. He groaned. His workshop, with all his most treasured technology and tools, and Killian had invited himself right in to build a—a—a hulk cage! And he knew Killian. There was no way Aldrich had done the work himself, oh no, he had brought _minions_ into his most private sanctum. Tony felt downright violated.

And then there was the issue of having a stranger in the same vicinity as his most private, secret plans. One casual glance at a screen and all his work could be laid to waste…

He glanced again at the naked guy. At least he could do something about that. For his own sake. He didn’t want to go around all day with another dude’s junk in his peripheral vision. Tony kept a stash of extra clothes in the workshop in case of accidents. Nothing fancy, just an AIM shirt and a pair of black cargo pants. On second thought, he traded the cargo pants out for a pair of sweatpants. He liked that pair. He stuffed the clothes through the hatch, then proceeded to run the ‘bots warm-up protocols. He was going to need their help to rearrange the shop.

****

Three hours later, Tony had the workshop rearranged quite cleverly to maximize power stations, minimize cable clutter, and ensure he was no farther than five feet away from an alcoholic beverage at any time. Which reminded him, where did that bottle go? Oh yeah. Right there.

He lost about 100 square feet of space—not including the actual cage—which wasn’t too bad considering the size of the cavernous underground compound. Tony used the hanging flat screens to block most of his captive’s view, even though he would be able to see only the closest station anyway. Still, Tony tilted the monitor a little farther away.

The bots were installing the high-definition holographic arrays in the farthest corner of the lab, where Banner wouldn’t be able to see at all. The armor was already back there, too, gleaming in the dim light of the bots’ optical sensors.

Tony crept backwards along the cage with a measuring tape. Maybe he could put a wall up there. It would have to be at least adamantium—vibranium would be better—but he could do it. Something in the corner of his eye moved and made him look up. A worn, dusty gaze met his and then Tony realized Banner was watching from where he lay on the cot.

Tony couldn’t help but scramble up, though he hoped he hid it in a graceful-ish rise to his feet. He stared right back while the tape measure retracted and snapped back into the metal reel. Banner’s eyes didn’t move. Glazed over, half-lidded, he was drugged to the gills. Still, Tony’s eyes flicked over to the tranquilizer gun Killian had left behind.

“Yoohoo,” he whistled. No response. He fetched the gun, and then made sure the cartridge was loaded in the chamber before he stepped right up to the glass.

“Hey!” Tony yelled as he tapped loudly on the glass with the gun. That made the man inside flinch and screw his eyes shut, and Tony belatedly remembered the green behemoth from the video files. Ok, yeah, keep him happy. He could do that.

“Hey,” he called a little softer. The man’s eyes opened again, but he otherwise didn’t move. Tony gestured with the gun towards the tumble of cloth on the floor by the hatch. “Clothes.”

Brown eyes blinked owlishly at him.

Tony was getting impatient. “Put them on!”

He did, slowly, one pale limb at a time, then sat back down on the cot and pulled his knees up to his chest.

The two men stared at each other for a long time. Well, Tony unabashedly stared while Banner just glowered into the safe middle distance, but Tony had a sense he was being studied. Paranoia could do that to a person.

Tony sniffed loudly to break the silence. Banner didn’t look up, but Tony knew he had what little attention his drug-addled brain could spare.

“So, as you are our…what shall we call you? Guinea pig. Let’s go with guinea pig. So, as you are our new guinea pig, I hope you like your habitat. No, on second thought, you better fucking hate it because it’s in the middle of my fucking workshop and don’t get too comfortable because we’re gonna vivisect you pretty soon anyway.”

Tony watched Banner’s eyes, but they never changed, not even a flicker. The frustration was overwhelming. Tony made his way over to the hatch on the door. “The Army couldn’t get it out of you, but…well…you know what they say about military intelligence.” Banner hadn’t moved, and Tony was out of his line of sight, but he could swear he saw Banner’s lips twitch at that comment. Tony’s temper leapt like the flames of a forge at the challenge.

“We’re not military here, guinea pig. We have technology the military has never dreamed of, and the best scientific minds and lowest morals in the world creating more every day. We’ll find a way to use you, one way or another, so you may as well cut that Zen master bullshit out right now,” Tony ranted. He knew he was ranting, but it felt good, and he deserved a little freak out over losing his workshop. Even though Banner hardly blinked the whole time.

Tony stared at him for a while longer, but he may as well have been watching paint dry. Banner did nothing but sit on the cot, his knees still drawn up tight against his chest, and stare at the floor. He didn’t ask any questions, make any demands, or even sniffle. Tony wasn’t in the captive business, but he was pretty sure this was not normal behavior. After another minute, Tony stuck the gun through the hatch and tranqued him.

****

The apartment at Iron Works wasn’t as opulent as the penthouse in New York and it didn’t feel like home like Malibu did. But the water was hot, the bar was fully stocked and the bed was wide, and that was all that really mattered.

A wave of exhaustion washed over him so suddenly that he sank down on the bed as if a physical force pushed him down. The ice in the glass clinked and a little sloshed over the side onto the Russian sable throw, but he was too tired to care.

Tony wanted to sleep. He wanted to close his eyes and let oblivion take over for a little while. But sleep wouldn’t come while every fiber of his being was focused on one thing: Extremis.

He rolled over and took his phone off the bedside charger to call Killian.

“Anthony,” Killian answered over the video. From the background, it looked like he was in one of his labs. A pair of clear goggles was pushed up on his forehead. “Problems?”

“None you can solve,” Tony replied, “unless you’re constructing new living quarters for the monster in the basement.”

Killian just smiled. “How did your missile deal go? Can I give the board good news?”

“You can tell your board to go back to its circle jerk and leave me the fuck alone and I’ll keep making the billions.”

“Sounds like a plan. Now, let’s talk about plan E.”

“About that.”

Killian’s eyes glittered. “I have a team prepping right now to handle the biologics. If we get you the data…”

“I’ll crack this code wide open. In the meantime, you need to get on the line to Wakanda and get me more vibranium.”

Tony didn’t need the video feed to see Killian’s wince. “That’s going to cost.”

“It’s going to cost your ass if it doesn’t get done today. Pay what they want. I can afford it.”

He nodded. “Alright, Tony, whatever you say.” He looked uncomfortable for a second, which was strange for the normally composed businessman. “Tony, you have to know it might take a while. I’ve got the best team I could find, but without Maya—“

“Get the data.”

He shut off the phone and tossed it back on the nightstand. He needed another drink.

If he closed his eyes, he could still see the flame-bright cracks across her forehead as she screamed, the energy forcing its way out any way it knew how.

Tony never knew how to let things go until they blew up in his face.

****

In a few weeks, the vibranium from Wakanda would arrive and Tony could start building the new Hulk cage. Until then, Banner wasn’t moving. Killian offered to send his minions to look after him, which nearly sent Tony running for the closest lockdown protocol. Killian was more stupid than Tony thought if his answer was to bring even more strangers here.

Tony knew Killian dumped Banner on him on purpose. Killian knew he wouldn’t be able to leave his workshop alone with a stranger in it. He’d effectively made him a monster-sitter, leaving the problem up to him since Tony was oh-so-good at solving problems.

Then again, living (ok, working, but really the workshop was home, and the only thing that could get him out of there was a hot shower) with Banner around didn’t require much from Tony. Killian kept him drugged so far down that he would barely do more than mumble in his sleep and curl up tighter on the cot. He didn’t even wake to eat or drink, and neither Killian nor Tony was about to go inside to start him on an IV, even if he was near-comatose.

Tony flipped through the file again, as if there was some instruction manual in there he was missing. Actually, there just might be because large sections were blacked out. Mostly it was experimental procedures, though they did give him the raw data results. At least that was something, even though a lot of the numbers didn’t make sense out of context. But apparently the care and feeding of a Hulk was highly classified information.

He glanced at Banner over the edge of his monitor, and he swore he could see him wasting even further away. The file claimed that the military had tried to starve him to death and that it didn’t work. Actually, there were notes on how several methods of death had either outright failed or else triggered a Hulk. Maybe Killian was trying something similar, but there were no notes in the file on that. In fact, according to his records, it looked like he wasn’t doing much more than drawing blood yet. Hmm. Maybe Killian figured he just didn’t need to eat.

Still…the file indicated he was on a pretty high dose of sedatives. That seemed like overkill for a man who looked like he was about as much of a threat as a wet noodle. He was due for another dose in less than an hour; usually it would be about time to stick the gun through the hatch and have what accounted for their total daily interaction.

He glanced at the tranquilizer gun, looking slight and innocuous considering the whallop the cartridge could punch. A few seconds later, the sedative cartridge was in four neat pieces in his palm: three small vials and the mechanized injection head. The vials all contained the same amount of a clear fluid—and they weren’t labeled. Oh well. It wasn’t a six-shooter, but it would have to do for a quick game of Russian roulette.

Tony chose a vial at random and set it aside, then loaded the other two. He walked over to the door, knocking the gun against the glass as he went. No response. Big surprise.   He discharged the round through the hatch, but he wasn’t even rewarded with a grunt of acknowledgment as the dart hit its mark.

He went to the back to retrieve a gauntlet to work on while he waited for the doctored dose to take effect…or not to. He was kind of hoping for something to happen, for Banner to at least roll the fuck over or something.

Tony was reminded, suddenly, of being at the zoo. He must have been with Jarvis at the time, because he remembered the butler telling him to stop climbing the railings. Tony had been amused, until he saw his mother’s slightly disapproving stare. The corners of her mouth were turned up, but her eyes were hard and tired.

At first, he hadn’t remembered his mother being with them. Had his father?

No, no, his father had been somewhere else. Who the fuck knows. That wasn’t the point. The point was that Jarvis was yelling at him, but that was normal, and he was having a good time. Waiting for the grizzly bear.

But it was summer-hot in the city, and Mother was already out of patience.

“It’s sweltering, Tony.”

“I know.” He was hot, too, beads of sweat tumbling down peaks of dark hair. “Another minute? I thought they were supposed to hibernated in winter, not summer.”

Tony felt the hot breath of his mother’s sigh as she passed him. “It’s July in San Diego,” she said over her shoulder. “They’ll hibernate whenever they damn well please.”

Thinking of the bear, Tony pointed the gauntlet repulsor at the glass. “Well, I guess you’ll hibernate whenever you damn well please.”

He lowered it, using his other hand to steady it since the servos weren’t connected and it couldn’t exactly bear its own weight. Repulsor blasts wouldn’t do much good anyway, Tony mused, not against glass reinforced with graphene. Nope. Maybe the laser, but it was limited to a 10 second beam…

An hour passed without a stir. Tony didn’t want to admit it, but he was both disappointed and a little thrilled. He didn’t really know what he was going to do with him if he woke up, but it would have at least been interesting to figure it out. In the meanwhile, he returned to the flight stabilizer design he was working on.

A little while later, a soft, hitching gasp came from the cage. Tony peered around the workstation to see Banner shifting on the cot. Bruised eyelids fluttered open, and he blinked a few times before allowing his gaze to slowly roam the room and settle on Tony.

“So…going to turn into a giant green rage monster anytime in the immediate future?” Tony asked.

Banner blinked, but otherwise didn’t react.

“No? Does that collar really work? Who even designed it?”

A quick search of the file revealed it to be invented by Banner himself.

Maybe the expression in his eyes changed, but they were so dull it was hard to tell. Tony slipped the gauntlet onto his arm and picked up his scotch with his other hand. He stood and walked up to the cage. Up closer, he could see that Banner was tracking him just fine as he moved. He was awake; he just wasn’t answering.

“Ok, something easy. What’s your name?”

No answer, but his eyebrow twitched in a furrow.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

This was getting annoying. Tony tapped on the glass with a gauntleted hand. “Say something!”

Banner blinked once, slowly, and there was something like boredom in his eyes.

“I know who you are.” Banner’s voice was husky and warm and smooth all at the same time. It shocked Tony, though he wasn’t sure why.

“Oh yeah? I’ve been on the cover of Rolling Stone seven times. So you haven’t been living under a rock your entire life.”

“You’re the Merchant of Death.”

That made Tony stop and stare a little harder. That was not an epithet he heard often—at least not to his face--though it did make him smile. He always liked that one best.

“You flatter me. But yay, good job. You’re a trainable guinea pig. Speaks on command.”

There wasn’t much in the way of edibles in the workshop, since Tony preferred to take his nutrients in liquid form, with alcohol. But he had some oranges and limes in the mini-fridge for garnishes. He took an orange, opened the hatch, and rolled it across the floor of the cage. It bumped into a leg of the cot and bounced into the corner. Banner just stared at it with dead eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Tony said after a moment. “The Army didn’t feed you?”

From the look on Banner’s face, Tony didn’t need him to speak to answer.

****

It took Banner two days to decide to eat the damn orange.

He stared at it a lot. Sometimes he looked just to the side of it. Sometimes, he very deliberately didn’t look at it. But he didn’t touch it or otherwise acknowledge its presence.

Tony kept removing one vial from the sedative cartridge because watching Banner study the orange was at least more entertaining than watching him sleep. But he wouldn’t talk, which was driving Tony mad.   So he cranked the stereo up louder to make him forget that there was someone else in the room and went back to work.

But, when Banner finally ate the orange, it was worth the wait.

A swarthy, unsteady hand reached over from the cot to where the fruit lay on the floor and just rested on it for a second, as if he wasn’t sure this whole time if it was even there. His hand closed around it slowly, then brought it up to press it against his lips and nose. He inhaled deeply, and he was lucky Tony bought organic produce, or else he would have ended up with lungful of pesticide. But the look on his face was so peaceful and serene that Tony barely noticed setting down his tools.

Banner sat up on the cot and leaned against the wall, head bent forward over the orange cradled in his palms. He pressed the edge of his thumbnail into the fleshy peel, breathing deep to savor the burst of essential oils, before sliding his nail up under the rind. Tony half expected him to rip it apart, or maybe even swallow it whole, but on the contrary, he took his time so the peel came off in one long, curled strip. Then he set it aside and proceeded to stare at the peeled orange.

Tony rolled his eyes. “No wonder they didn’t feed you. Takes too damn long. Thought you were trying to farm penicillin.”

Banner ignored him, but Tony played through an entire Pink Floyd album and wired the motherboard for an infrared tracking missile before he broke apart the orange. He peeled off one small section and slowly bit it in half. His eyelids fluttered and closed reflexively, and even from the other side of the glass, Tony could see the hitch in his breathing that turned into a sigh. A bit of juice escaped from the corner of his mouth, and a quick pink tongue caught the drop. Banner sucked the remaining juice from the other half of the section and off his fingers before popping the rest of the piece into his mouth.

Then, he just laid down again, the rest of the orange placed carefully on the edge of the cot, and fell asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

With or without the drugs, Banner seemed to be the model prisoner. He didn’t make any demands or ask questions; he didn’t plead or beg or wonder aloud what would happen to him. He was just _there_ , a quiet presence all the time.

It should have freaked Tony the fuck out. But it didn’t. In fact, it was strangely soothing to come down to the workshop after a long few hours of pretending to sleep and have some company for a change. The energy in the air was different, as if some tension that Tony hadn’t even noticed was there had dissipated. Well, he did read once that having a pet was a calming influence, or maybe Banner’s habitat did something to the feng shui of the place.

Killian came and went, too, ferrying Banner's unconscious body up and down the elevator. Banner usually slept for at least half a day after a test session, but he would groggily watch Tony putter around when he could manage to open his eyes.   He ate when food was given to him, but didn’t ask for it otherwise. And the plastic cups and bowls were always rinsed out and placed neatly by the hatch when he was finished.

Once, Banner returned from a session with Killian with a neat incision sealed with surgical glue and bruising around his eyes, hands and wrists. But he woke up again just fine when Tony didn't drug him down too far, and the wound was nearly healed before Killian returned for the next procedure.

The routine continued for a few days. Then, one afternoon, a soft voice floated down from the air in between the screeches of the metal grinder.  

“The Army thinks you’re a ghost.” The voice was raspy and ended in a soft cough.

Tony pushed his goggles over his sweaty hair and turned towards the voice. Banner was lying on his side on the cot using the underside of one arm as a pillow and watching Tony with intense eyes, almost black with their attempt to soak in the light.

“They think Anthony Stark was murdered with his parents, and you’re just some drug-addled actor they’ve hired to play him in public.   But really, it’s a whole think-tank of scientists pulling the strings behind AIM.”

Tony laughed at the absurdity of the idea, but the thought of group of scientists trying to “improve” his schematics made his insides feel like jelly. “No think tank,” he said. “Just me.” Though he could admit he saw the appeal of body doubles. Then again, he’d rather have one he could program. He picked up a screwdriver to tap against his chin as he thought.

But the sting of Banner’s comments wouldn’t let him go. He grabbed his tablet and pulled over a stool to sit directly in front of the glass. “Let’s see,” Tony said as he tapped on the screen, “what they think about you.”

Tony angled the tablet’s projector so it illuminated the glass wall between them. He flipped through most of the boring childhood stuff…murder witness yadayada, foster homes this and that, before Banner found his footing in a science magnet high school and eventually the military scouted him and paid for his education.

But then Banner joined the Army in gamma research and things got…interesting.

The engineer stared hard at his prisoner for a moment. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about him, staring at the ceiling with the same abstracted expression he usually wore.

“How did they choose _you_ as a test subject for the next Captain America?”

“There wasn’t any _they_. It was me. I did it to myself.”

“You did this to yourself?” Tony said, in wonder.

There was no answer, so Tony shut down the tablet projector to make sure he had Bruce’s attention. “You did this to yourself?” he repeated, louder, demanding.

“Yes.”

“Why? Why would you do that? Man, try it on some mice or some rats… every species in the world before you pump that poison into your own veins,” Tony said.

Banner turned his head and look at him, but his expression didn’t change and he didn’t answer.

Tony continued on down the file but his eyes wouldn’t focus while the questions still burned in his mind. He took a deep breath and closed the tablet. Then he stood right in front of Banner's cage.

Banner didn’t move off the cot, but he turned a little more on his side to face Tony.

“I gotta know, guinea pig. Why did you do it? What could possibly make you do it?”

“We were going to lose our military funding,” a tired voice admitted. “We needed a breakthrough, and there was no way we were getting permission for human trials. And I was sure it was ready. I was so sure."

And then he closed his eyes and rolled over to face the opposite wall.

“Ah, guinea pig, we were doing so well together! Come on, keep talking. Tell me more about those Army fucks. Or was that place Club Med compared to here?”

Nothing, not even a sigh in response.

So Tony rapped on the glass. “Look, you obviously know this prisoner routine pretty well, and it doesn’t seem like you want to cause any trouble so far. So, what can I do to make it a little easier on you. I mean, I’m not about to give you full WiFi access, but want Netflix?”

He really, really, didn’t expect an answer, so it shouldn’t have surprised him when he didn’t get one. “Come on, gerbil. A fancy water bottle? I’ll even fill it with virgin Icelandic glacier melt.”

Banner’s slight shoulders drooped even more as he pulled tighter into himself.

Tony slapped his palm hard against the glass. His hand stung, but the way the sound made Banner jump was worth it. “Look at me!”

Banner obeyed.

Then, quieter, putting as much of his own weariness in his voice as he dared, Tony said, “Tell me something you want, guinea pig. Anything.”

Banner’s face twisted for a second and he reached up to drag his fingers through his short curls. “How about a shower?”

Tony paused.  That was more difficult than he expected it to be. “Well, there isn’t much down here. I mean, there’s the emergency safety shower, but the water’s pretty cold…”

Banner shrugged. “So’s the sink.”

Tony looked at the shallow little sink, barely deep enough to hold water, if it even would. And Killian would kill him if he found out Banner was running around loose.

That settled it.

“Ok.” Tony picked up the tranq gun and tapped it on his thigh as he surveyed the shower. It was nothing but a water pipe with a shower head jutting out from the wall over a drain. He hadn’t had to use it yet, and he didn’t exactly build it with comfort in mind, but it was well away from any electronics so at least he didn’t have to worry about Banner spying on his tech.

Rigging up a curtain would be a pain in the ass and, Tony supposed, pretty counter-intuitive to the whole prisoner-watching business. And the only soap he had was some abrasive stuff he used to get the engine oil out of the cracks of his hands. But he supposed Banner wouldn’t care.

The lab rat in question was lying on his cot, trying to look very unconcerned with Tony’s answer but he could see the glee in the dark brown eyes. The engineer stepped up the door and pressed his palm on the keypad. The door clicked open.

“Come on.” Tony gestured with the gun towards the bare shower.

Banner kept his eyes averted a little, but he swung his feet to the floor and stood.   With slow, deliberate movements he removed the borrowed clothes and left them on the cot, then he walked out of the cage and over the shower.

Tony covered him with the gun for the short walk, then he plopped down in one of his office chairs. “Ok, you have ten minutes.”

Banner glanced over his shoulder once and flipped on the shower. The lever creaked, and the water stuttered for a second before a clear, strong stream cascaded down Banner’s chest and down the drain.

Tony didn’t mean to watch. He really didn’t. But after a few seconds it was pretty obvious that Banner forgot he was there, so no harm anyway. He sighed as he rolled his head back and forth under the spray, eventually leaning his forearms against the wall and letting his head fall forward so the water could run down his back. And then he just kind of breathed into it, like he could feel each drop of liquid on his skin.

After a few long moments that seemed to hang in the air like vapor, Banner broke out of the spell and reached down for the soap. He rubbed the rough soap--some fancy igneous-laced stuff--between his fingers and palms before soaping across his shoulders and down his chest. The dark hair there stuck to his body with the suds, but it did nothing to hide the thin scars crossing his chest, sometimes places obviously over major organs, and some places not. But, Tony noted that Banner didn’t seem to have any mobility problems, so whatever had been done to him had preserved his major nervous and muscle systems. Or else they had healed completely. Banner turned around to rinse, and Tony’s eyes followed the scars around his sides and across his back.

At least he could still bend over without any problem to rub the soap down his legs and back up between, and if Tony was watching then it was strictly for security purposes.

Truth be told, it was perhaps the most enticing shower scene Tony had ever seen, and that was saying a lot. And sex had nothing to do with it. No, this was a rarer kind of sensual. Tony knew what that felt like, though his first shower after the desert was nothing like that. A little aquaphobia can go a long way towards ruining a good, hot shower. Still, he wondered when the last time was when Banner felt clean.

The creak of the lever interrupted Tony’s thoughts.

Standing over the drain, Banner stripped the water from his limbs with his bare hands, and ran his hand over his hair to do the same. Oh, right. Towel. Tony scrambled for something, and came up with a sorry piece of old blue microfiber that might have once been a superabsorbent shop towel, but was now hardly bigger than a washcloth. But it was clean.

But by the time he found it, Banner was already back in the cage, laying down again on the metal cot, shivering a bit so that his teeth chattered even though he was grinning. Tony stepped over to the control panel to lock the door.

“Cold enough?”

“Yeah,” Banner answered. “It was wonderful.”

Tony snorted. “Lab penguin.” He looked over the syringes to the sedative cartridge, toying with which one to throw out this time. So far, it didn’t seem to matter which one he left out of the dose, so Tony figured it was just a triple dose of the same drug.

“I’ll take the drugs,” Banner muttered. “You don’t have to keep shooting me.”

“I like shooting you,” Tony replied. “Killian won’t let me on the handgun range. I think the phrases ‘PTSD’ and ‘shooting spree’ were flung around too freely.”

“PTSD? From what?” But his eyelids were already starting to droop.

“Life, guinea pig. Fucking life. Good night now.” And he shot him again just to make sure.

****

Killian came for Banner before he woke again. He came with a metal gurney and energy binders. Tony crossed his arms and watched Killian as he easily lifted his prisoner and strapped him down. His pale grey linen suit stretched over his back, and Tony could swear his muscles were even more bulging than before. He shook his head. Killian really had to lay off the ‘roids. And Banner looked ridiculous, so small under the glowing restraints. But Tony returned to the drafting table and barely glanced up as he was wheeled away.

The workshop felt bigger when Banner wasn’t in the cage. That was a strange feeling. Maybe Tony had lost more floor space than he had originally calculated.

He flipped through the latest redesigns for the armor, but he was stuck. With half a sigh and half a growl, he chose a sledge hammer from the rack near the back. He lugged it over to the shower wall. It wouldn’t be too difficult, he mused, to run the water pipes closer to the steam vents so that it heated the water.

Tony hefted the hammer over his shoulder and tore out a section of the wall. The drywall crumbled easily to reveal the plumbing behind and the concrete-and-steel reinforcements behind the pipes.   He could feel the weight of the hammer all the way up his arms and down his back, and the resistance of the plaster as it gave was deeply satisfying.

A few hours later, Tony was a mess. Plaster dust covered his hair and peppered his goatee, and his shirt was drenched in sweat. But, the shower had hot water, the wall was plastered back over, and Tony had even had the minions send down a small supply of toiletries and a towel. On second thought, he called down for a whole stack of towels, and then stripped down and hosed off the worst of the dirt.

There was no reason Banner was the only one who could enjoy it, and the hot, steamy water did wonders for the subterranean chill.

Project done, head clearer, Tony was physically exhausted.

Still…he didn’t really want to be there. So, he took the elevator up to the ground level. When the doors opened, the shock of the desert sun made his eyes water. How long had he been down there in the fluorescent dark? It felt like a century.

Even though it was autumn, the temperatures were still well over comfortably warm, and the sunshine on Tony’s shoulders itched as much as his eyes ached.

The small shed that hid the entrance to Tony’s workshop was just to the side of one of the main hangers, where a few dozen minions were working to assemble the newest model of quinjet. Tony stumbled over the short stretch of dirt and into the building.

“Mr. Stark,” a woman with short auburn hair addressed him as soon as he entered the door. Tony looked her up and down. She was dressed in a decent suit with the shirt unbuttoned enough against the heat to show off an even more decent rack, and she wasn’t quite smiling and not quite not smiling either as she took in his appearance. “Would you like me to take your apartment?” She indicated a golf cart near the cargo bay door.

Tony glanced over to the well-organized chaos beyond her in the hanger. The half-finished quinjet stood in its moorings as sparks flew around it. One crew was holding the wing in place with a crane as another attached it. The sound of metal and men at work was grating more than soothing now.

“You’re new,” Tony said as he headed towards the golf cart. She followed. “I don’t know you…”

“Ellen.”

“Ellen. How long have you been working here?”

“Eighteen months.”

“Oh.”

Tony climbed into the passenger seat. He would have driven himself, but the light was too bright and making his head hurt. He needed a drink.

“Got any scotch, Ellen?”

She glanced over with a rueful smile. “I don’t drink. But I ensure you that your apartment is fully stocked.”

“Ah, small favors.”

The ride was short, and she bade him farewell at the entrance. He showered—again—and shaved and changed, but he wasn’t particularly tired enough to sleep. It would come later, or not come at all. It didn’t really matter.

****

By the time Tony returned to the workshop, Banner was back in the cage, asleep. He looked deathly pale, but his chest rose and fell regularly enough. And he was naked. Again.

Tony dug through the cupboard for more clothes. This was going to get really old really quickly. He was going to have to talk to Killian because there went his cargo pants.

Up close to the cage, Banner looked far more ragged than when he left. His wrists were red and swollen, and his ankles were already bruising black and purple layered over the mottled green of the older bruises. He must have fought, Tony thought. Well, he supposed it was good that Iron Works was still standing. Killian knew what he was doing.

The thought was not as reassuring as it should have been.

Tony opened the hatch and stuffed the clothes through like he did before. He stepped back and watched Banner breathe for a few more seconds, chewing on his lip with indecisiveness, before he tapped on the glass with his knuckles. No answer. He did it again, louder. Still no response.

There was a wool fire blanket mounted to the wall. Tony fetched the scratchy blanket from its orange safety cover and shook it out. It smelled a little strange, but it was big and warm. Then, armed with the tranquilizer gun, he went back to the cage and pressed his palm to the sensor.

“Ok, guinea pig,” Tony said as he stepped hesitantly through the door, “if you are not, indeed, asleep I would appreciate it if you chose this time to play possum. I’ll even upgrade your lab animal status.”

While he spoke, Tony gingerly draped the cloth over the limp form on the cot. Tony also took the clothes from where they had landed in a heap on the floor and folded them into a pile and placed it by the bed. That done, he looked around at what else he could do.

“Well, I guess that’s what amounts to the five-star turn-down service around here,” he said. “Good night.”

Tony didn’t want to say he _ran_ out of the cage but he moved in a sprightly manner, slamming his hand on the keypad to release the door down behind him. Blood rushed in his ears and he was surprised to find himself panting with the after effects of adrenaline. He turned to see Banner, still and silent on his cot. But at least he looked warmer.

After a few moments of staring, Tony pulled up a workshop chair. Then he needed a drink. And a computer monitor. So he had the ‘bots come over and turn around the nearest workstation so he could see the screen and still see the cage in the edge of his vision. That way, he would know when Banner woke up.

All the commotion of moving the electronics and the furniture and yelling at the ‘bots to get moving, and Banner was still sleeping. Tony needed something to work on, to keep him distracted. His eyes roved around the dim workshop before lighting on the armor hanging in the corner.

****

Every few days, Killian would come for Banner, take him for a while, then leave him for Tony to look after. Or do whatever with. It occurred to Tony that Killian didn’t really give a shit what happened to Banner as long as he was available when he was needed. And if Tony didn’t look after the damn lab rat, no one was going to.

So, the next time Bruce was taken out of his cage, Tony went in and replaced the scratchy wool blanket with a microfiber fleece one and added a pillow. The wool blanket was folded up and used for padding on the hard bench.

On the exterior of one of the glass walls, Tony installed a flat screen monitor. He reprogrammed it to show only Netflix and to keep an access log so he could monitor any viewing patterns. He rigged the controls to the glass and added an auditory command system in case Banner didn’t want to...or couldn’t...get out of bed. It sure beat looking for the remote.

Tony stepped back to survey his handiwork. Well, it wouldn’t win any Home and Garden awards, but at least now the ambiance was something more like a prison cell and less like a kennel.

When the rumble of the elevator announced Killian’s return with Banner, Tony was rewiring the transdermal electronic nervous interface for the boots. He bent over the microscope that brought the filaments into view, but he wasn’t really looking at them. He was listening for whatever was going on in the cage.

He heard Killian’s disapproving sigh before he even heard the click of the lock disengaging.

“Tony, you’re going to ruin him,” Killian said.

Tony sat up and rubbed his eyes to help them adjust to the distance again. Then he stretched and leisurely made his way over to the cage. Killian had already lifted Banner’s unconscious weight from the stretcher and was lowering him down onto the bed. He wasn’t gentle, but then Banner didn’t seem to be in much of a position to care anyway.

Tony sat at his nearest workstation and turned the screen so it partially blocked the cage from view. He could see Killian at the entrance, but not Banner inside. “I don’t think a piece of cloth is going to ruin anyone,” he said.

Killian locked the cage as he exited and strolled up to lean his hip on Tony’s desk. “Do I have to remind you of the resourcefulness of geniuses?”

“No, you don’t,” Tony said calmly but he felt like he had been punch in the gut. He hated thinking of…that.

“And look at you now, Tony,” Killian said with a bright smile, and Tony let himself believe for a second that what he was saying was true. Two years wasn’t a long time...Two years ago, he was the one shivering in the cold, dead to the world. A year ago, he wouldn’t have been able to leave his basement, and now he was flying across the world on black-market missile deals.

Yes, he was better. Getting better. And, with Banner now, he was going to figure out Extremis and get better faster, a whole lot sooner.

But Killian’s smile faltered and he turned away a little. “You know, Tony, maybe it really isn’t the best idea to keep Banner in your lab.”

“No fucking shit.”

Killian sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I meant that maybe having him there all the time isn’t a good reminder of...what you’ve been through.”

Tony didn’t mean to, but he glanced over Killian’s shoulder (or tried to, the man had grown a fucking inch, he swore) to the pallet that looked so much more inviting just from the addition of some basic comforts. Banner was lying on the thick wool, his hips covered with the blue blanket, and his head resting on the pillow. He looked almost peaceful—except for the obvious electrical burns dotting his temple and jaw line.

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck have you been doing to him anyway.”

Killian was taken aback. “It’s all in the file, Tony.” He began wheeling the empty gurney towards the elevator. “Look, he’s fine. Peaceful as a kitten. Read the file.”

Tony watched Killian leave and went straight to the Scotch. He took the first drink in one long slide down his throat, coughing it up a little as it burned. He poured another and took a smaller sip. Properly on his way to inebriation, he settled into a chair and opened Banner’s medical file.

It wasn’t all that interesting. Mostly, they were just taking samples for laboratory analysis, and sending the numbers back to Tony. Some of the samples were from places that made Tony cringe--heart, liver, lungs, spinal fluid--but Banner seemed to be appropriately sedated, and he never complained afterwards.

He scrolled to the most recent procedures. More of the same, except they were using electricity to sedate him instead of drugs because he seemed to have developed a tolerance.

Fuck. Banner wasn’t developing a tolerance; Tony wasn’t writing notes of his own into the file about the lowered dose of sedatives.

He switched the tablet over to the video chat and dialed Killian.

“Tony,” Killian answered. He was in his office upstairs, Tony could tell from the awful salmon colored walls.

“Aldrich, it’s not the sedatives, it’s me.”

Killian smiled and raised an eyebrow in question.

“I’ve been reducing the sedative dose. He’s not developing a tolerance. He’s just not getting as much, so it looks like it metabolizes out faster, but it doesn’t.”

Killian let his head fall back in exasperation. “Tony, you have got to write these things down!”

“I know!”

“I know sometimes it’s just too much for you to stop and consider that other people can’t actually read your mind and condescend to put a note in a medical file…”

“I know!”

“...but you’re not the only one counting on this!”

“Look, the point is stop frying the guy, ok? No more electricity.”

Killian’s eyes glittered and his mouth set in a hard line. “What if it’s necessary?”

“For what?”

He got a half-shrug in response. “I’m not a biologist.”

“Then tell them to put the cattle prod away or I’ll use it on them.”

Tony could see the realization come over Killian’s face. The hard lines around his eyes softened, and his lips lost their rigidity. “I get it, Tony. I see what this is about. No more electricity.”

And then Tony realized what Killian was thinking. Yeah, he could remember the feeling of freezing fire and burning ice as he was shoved under the water and zapped again and again. His throat was tight when he answered, “Good,” and shut down the connection.

He spent a long time looking over the monitor to his workstation, watching Banner before he just couldn’t watch anymore. After another drink or two, he was ready to work on the armor.

A few hours later, Tony was tightening the tiny bolts on the instep of the right boot. The cordless drill whirred away, but there was a strange sound bleeding through the electric noise.

Tony knew Banner was awake by the sound of muffled crying. He came around to face the cage, brandishing the drill in his hand, and said, “What is wrong?”

The crying stopped abruptly, and he was faced with two very brown eyes peering over the pillow clutched to Banner’s chest. “Nothing,” Banner whispered through the pillow. “I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s been a really long time.” He clutched it tighter, as if he expected it to be taken away. “Thank you.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Tony turned back to the repulsor nodes in the boots he was finishing off. It had been so long since Tony had the chance to come here and work on the armor that he could look at some of his old problems with fresh eyes—like the boots. He hoped the new pattern would make the boots stable enough to levitate at least a few feet off the ground before pitching over. He screwed the last joints together. He was ready for a test run.

Looking around his workshop, Tony realized he had made a mistake. With his new streamlined-away-from-the-scary-monster floor plan, he did not leave room for a crash pad. The only open space was the area in front of the cage.

It would have to do.

Tony directed the bots in placing the dense black pads, and then set one up with the camera and one with the fire extinguisher, since his fire blanket had been repurposed. Banner, burrowed deep in the blanket and still clutching the pillow, watched with sleepy amusement, and he seemed to be trying to fight the drugs so he could see what would happen.

Tony stepped into the left boot first, manually tightening each of the bolts before stepping into the right and repeating the process. Then he connected the thick power cables to the arc reactor mounted in the harness crossing his chest.

Next came the repulsor-powered flight stabilizers. He slipped his wrists in and cinched the velcro with his teeth. Then those wires were connected and he was ready.

“Ok, Dum-E, keep the film rolling, wide angle, don’t wanna miss anything here. You--just use your best judgment.”

He positioned Dum-E and the camera on the cage side of the mat, since he was pretty sure he didn’t want his pet rage monster in the shot. But that also meant that when he was looking at the camera, he was looking at fucking _Banner_ because now he was definitely awake and interested in Tony’s antics.

“Test flight fifteen for the Mark 2 repulsor integrated flight system. We’ll start real easy here. Point five percent power.”

Bruce’s eyes went wide as saucers, and he winced as he tried to sit up to see more.

The repulsors whined online and there was a muffled roar and a burst of light from under the boots before they slowly started to rise.

Bruce was on his feet now, one hand across his forehead in disbelief, the other clutched around his waist.

Tony kicked it up by another tenth of a percent and he could hover maybe a meter off the floor. But, now was the hard part. Steering. He could use the hand repulsors to push himself around, which delighted Banner to no end, but he couldn’t do much more than awkwardly hover.

Finally, he ran through the normal routine and moved on to the real trouble area: fine control.

When he had the helmet on, he could steer just fine with the retinal sensors in the Heads Up Display, but he also had to manage power, artillery, and navigation. He had to be an entire battle crew in one suit.

But, right now, he was working on getting across the workshop without breaking his neck.

Slowly, as steadily as he could, he shifted his weight more into his heels. The boots responded with more power, and he almost pitched forward with the sudden vertical surge. He had to fight the urge to throw his hand above his head to protect his skull from the ceiling, but he kept his wits and carefully eased off his heels until he was ascending slowly.

And then Dum-E moved the camera to track him, and the movement was too quick and dark in the corner of Tony’s eye. He startled, and the heel of his left boot clicked back, and his left foot suddenly shot forward into the air.

Dragged by the single boot, Tony lost control of his arms and they flew wildly over his head, the wrist repulsors engaging as Tony gripped them in a panic. He flipped in the air as the boot pushed one way and his hands did another, and landed hard enough against the side of the Hulk cage to rattle the joints.

Gasping, Tony ripped the power cords from the arc reactor, and the gasp turned into a growl as his shoulder lit up, on fire from his neck to his ribs.

He was mostly upside down, back against the Hulk cage and feet sprawled across the side of the cage and the floor. Banner was right up against the glass, tapping on it to get Tony’s attention.

“Hey! Stark! You alive?”

“Fuuuuuck…”

He heard a sigh. It might have even been relieved.

Slowly, painfully, Tony picked himself up off the workshop floor until he was sitting up. Everything hurt, but he was pretty sure nothing was broken. Except for maybe a couple of pieces of the armor that were scattered around and under him.

“Too much power. Not enough control,” Tony muttered.

Banner snorted. “Preach it, Brother.”

Tony’s head snapped up. He hadn’t noticed Banner sinking to the floor on his side of the glass so that they were sitting on the same level. Banner squinted at him and said, “Hey, you hit your head really hard. Look up and let me see your eyes.”

Banner’s voice sounded so genuinely concerned that Tony was shocked into complying. His prisoner scooted up close to the glass and he leaned closer in response. Their eyes locked, and Tony could see that Banner wasn’t looking into his eyes so much as looking for something, analyzing, thinking, studying him. Brown irises searched his, and the tiny muscles around the edges twitched as he refocused.

“Yeah, you look ok, but be careful getting up.” Banner drew back, so Tony did, too. “Does your head hurt?”

“What are you a doctor or something?” Tony scowled because yeah, he was getting a headache now.

“Sometimes,” Banner replied with a shrug. He pushed himself to his feet, but he didn’t have anywhere to go in the cage, so he lay down on the cot.

Banner licked his lips. “If gross motor control if that difficult, the fine control needed for flight would be…” He chuckled darkly. “Well, I don’t think the Other Guy can help you with that.”

“You might be surprised,” Tony murmured. But he didn’t think Banner heard him. Coded correctly, Extremis would allow him to directly interface with the armor...flying would be as natural as running.

He began to drag himself to his feet and pick up the pieces of scuffed armor. On second thought, he left the armor where it fell and stumbled to the fridge for ice packs and scotch.

Tony settled his most favorite leather office chair in front of the cage. A glance over showed Banner to be lying facing the wall, maybe asleep. Loaded with ice packs, a drink and a tablet, he began to go over the flight data to see if there was any measurable improvement on the last design.

Tony was on his third drink when the soft voice floated over.

“Subdermal microrepeater implants.”

Tony sat up and looked over to Banner. He was half-sitting up on the cot, pushing his short curls out of his face. “I mean, you might have to actually rewire your nervous system, and then there’s always a chance of rejection of any foreign object in the body…”

But Tony was already drafting at his desk, music turned up loud enough to drown Banner out.

It just might work.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Tony shook his head as he watched Killian yet again strap Banner’s unconscious body onto the gurney. If he were the subject of highly illegal experiments in someone’s basement, they would have to drag him away kicking and screaming every single time. But it did put less stress on Tony’s wardrobe, so he figured he didn't have a reason to complain.

Banner was always unconscious when he was returned to the cage. Usually he woke up fine—a little stiff and sore, but fine. But a few times he woke up sick. Tony used the workstation closest to the cage on those days so he could keep an eye on him. And he made sure to roll an electrolyte-replacement drink through the hatch at regular intervals. Banner would flop around on the cot, but he tried to keep quiet and if Tony turned the music up a bit, he hardly knew the lab rabbit was there.

****

Banner practiced yoga.

He got flustered the first time Tony caught him at it, halfway into crow. He startled and stood, wringing his hands before sitting hesitantly on the cot. Tony just rolled his eyes, cranked up the stereo, and turned back to his soldering. After that, he didn’t seem to give a fuck what Tony thought of it, and he did it more or less twice a day.

And he meditated.

“Ok, lab rat, teach me how to do this brainwave voodoo,” Tony said during a break one day.

Bruce was busy staring at the ceiling. He shrugged. “Sure if you want. But I don’t think it’s going to help you take over the world or talk to your robots or anything like that.”

“I read about transcendental meditation in the Wall Street Journal. If that’s not a supervillain must-have subscription then I don’t know what is,” Tony countered.

Banner chuckled while he pulled his blanket off the bed and folded it to make a cushion for the floor. Then he sat cross-legged so that his knees were almost touching the glass. He waved Tony over. “Bring something to sit on. And a timer.”

Tony took a cushion from a shop chair and set the timer on his watch as he walked back over to Banner's cage.

“That’s not connected to any missile silos in Cuba or anything like that, is it?” Bruce asked playfully.

Tony smiled in return.   “No. This one’s the timer for the lights on the Brooklyn Bridge.”

And, just for a second, a light flashed through Bruce’s dull eyes, leaving them glowing for a moment in the aftermath. It was as if the thought that Tony could control the city lights with a wristwatch lit some deep childish wonder still left in him. And of course, it was swallowed by the next moment, and when he blinked his eyes were back to dull brown.

“Close your eyes and pick a word or a sound… _Om_ is good. Though I think you’re probably more of a _vroom_ kind of guy.”

“Vroom,” Tony tried out. “Vroom-Vrroom-Vrrrooooom…vroom.”

“Yeah, like that, but silently in your head.”

“Rolling my R’s isn’t nearly as fun that way.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

****

Killian kept funneling him data. Blood, bone, and tissue analysis; cell regeneration rates; mitochondrial fluctuations. But all Tony’s simulations played out the same way: inconclusive.

“I can’t balance an equation if I don’t know what’s on the other side.”

Tony threw a tennis ball against the floor to ricochet off and hit the glass to bounce back. It made a pleasant rhythm. The sound must have reverberated around the inside of the cage, but Banner didn’t seem too bothered by it. He also wasn’t rising to the bait.

Tony tried again.

“I don’t know.” Bounce, bounce, catch. “What your DNA looks like.” Bounce, bounce, catch. “After a transformation.”

That last word merited a turn of the head and a raised eyebrow.

“Good luck with that,” Banner said before turning his gaze to the ceiling again.

“You can’t just like...for a second?” Tony said.

Banner tapped the collar around his neck.

“Why do you want to know?” Banner asked.

“I’m trying to stabilize the Extremis effect!” Tony said, exasperated. “I haven’t worked on anything else since you’ve been here!”

“You work on your armor an awful lot.”

Tony threw the ball hard against the side of the glass. “I always tinker with the armor during big projects.”

Banner squinted at him for a second before turning away again. “Oh,” he said blandly. “Well, that’s not going to work out for everyone anyway.”

Tony stalked up to the glass, tennis ball forgotten on the floor. Banner didn’t turn his head to look, but Tony could tell he was being tracked.

“You know, Killian is going to find his answers somehow.”

“I know,” Banner answered in that same soft, almost bored tone. But then he rolled onto his side so he faced Tony, his head pillowed on the inside of his folded arm. “I don’t know what ‘Extremis’ is, but the trouble with me is the effects _aren’t_ stable. There are variables at play that we don’t even have tools to measure.”

Tony scratched at his goatee and fetched his chair so he could sit in front of the cage more or less at Banner’s level. Maybe Banner appreciated the small gesture because he kept talking.

“His level of self-control is directly related to the transformation trigger.”

“The event?”

Banner shook his head a little. “My mood at the time of transformation.” He looked at Tony and smiled ruefully. “Not exactly scientific, is it?”

Tony frowned and rubbed his goatee with his other hand as he thought aloud. “No, no, it could make sense. I mean, plenty of physiological changes are cued by emotion. Heartrate. Respiration. Adrenaline. Hormone levels. All of those are measurable responses to emotional stimuli.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better, aren’t you?”

“Well, apparently, you’re a very sensitive rage monster.”

He chuckled and went back to staring at the ceiling, so Tony scooted closer and rapped on the glass with his knuckles.

“So, that wasn’t really an answer. In fact, doesn’t that mean that it’s even safer than I thought for you to transform? We’ll put on some mellow music, light some candles, practice yoga--I’ll even meditate with you! And then you can transform, transform back, I get my data, presto-change-o!”

As usual, Banner just ignored Tony and stared at the ceiling.

“And,” Tony continued, his voice taking on a hard edge, “Killian can stop drilling holes into your fucking bone marrow trying to get different results with the same methods.”

Bruce closed his eyes, and he paled down to his lips. When he opened his eyes again, the brown irises looked deep and dark against bloodless skin.

“Fine.” He stood and began to slowly strip off his shirt and pants. “Take off the collar. I’ll transform for you. But I’m going to warn you first. He is not me. The Other Guy...he has his own very clear opinions about what’s going on here and who’s responsible. And once I let him loose, I can’t do anything to stop him.” Banner stood facing him naked, hands held loosely by his sides. “Do you think he’d call you a friend or an enemy?”

Tony was trembling. He was shaking so badly that he didn’t think he’d be able to stand if he tried. So he snorted and barked, “Get dressed,” as he spun the rolling chair around and pushed it back to his workstation with his feet.

****

For the rest of the day, Tony stayed at the back of the workshop, well away from the sight of Banner lying despondent in the cage.

Much later, when he was sure Banner was bored enough to go to sleep, Tony glanced at the Netflix viewing log. He hadn’t seen Banner turn the television on yet, but he might be watching it while he was sleeping upstairs. He was right. _Blue Planet_ , _Wild Earth_ , _Natural Kingdom_ …All nature documentaries, though it looked like he made it only about 20 minutes into _Blackfish_. Huh.

****

“Wanna go outside, labbit?”

Banner slowly opened his eyes to peer up at Tony with a bright, distrustful gaze. He wanted to say something, Tony could see it clear as day, but he couldn’t tell if it was “yes” or “fuck off.”

But the mood shifted. Banner snorted and turned over so his back was to Tony.

Tony had to interact with the minions to arrange this, so it was going to fucking happen. A quick tightening of the Kevlar vest under his jacket and a flick of the tranquilizer gun’s safety, and he let the door swing wide open.

“Please, don’t…” Banner started when Tony approached him on the cot, but he shut up as soon as he saw the energy binders, and he didn’t say another word as they were fastened to his wrists.

Banner was rigid with stress and maybe a bit of fright, so Tony used the binders to pull him closer. “It’s dark. The stars are out.” That made him relax a little, and Tony let him back down.

“Killian’s not around, and I’ve sent most of the minions away. I own the arid desert land in at least 100 miles in every direction, and I have several tons of automatic warheads trained on your DNA code in case you try to escape. Now, will you come outside for a breath of fucking fresh air?”

“Ok.”

“Good.” Tony backed up a little and Banner stood up, gingerly testing the limits of the binders.

Tony hesitated before lifting the black bag over Banner’s head, but he was solid and steady. With a hand on Banner’s shoulder, Tony marched him to the elevator. He briefly considered using the emergency exit stairs, but he wasn’t sure if Banner knew how far down they truly were. The elevators worked on effortlessly smooth AIM repulsor-tech, so a journey up or down took only a few seconds.

But, really, they were a long way down.

Still, Banner kept it together in the elevator—which Tony didn’t admit until it was over was actually _scary as fuck_. And they stepped out at the surface where a black Range Rover waited, as per his instructions.

Tony steered his charge into the passenger seat and Banner was surprisingly silent as Tony reached over to buckle him in. He folded his bound hands in his lap and didn’t even attempt to take off the bag. Tony just slid into the driver’s seat with a shake of his head. The keys were already in the ignition and the gas tank was full.

So he just drove.

Seen from the ground, Iron Works was a low, lean collection of warehouses, airfields, and airplane hangars, which were blinds for cavernous underground research facilities—his own the most noteworthy of course.

It wasn’t exactly a place for sightseeing, even as dusk approached from the east, long indigo shadows creeping in with the autumn chill. He roared passed the squat, gray buildings and checkered flight towers, turned off one dirt road and onto a different one. That’s when he reached over and dragged the bag off Banner's head.

Since they were driving parallel to the main airstrip, Banner could see most of the exterior of Iron Works through his window without being close enough to see any people. He tried to keep his gaze on his hands in his lap, but Tony saw him sneak glances out the window out of the corner of his eye.

Then they came to the complex barbed wire gating system. Beyond the gate were a paved road and more barbed wire, then a dirt road and tumbleweed. He didn’t really know where he was going. He just knew that there was no one to bother them.

Banner was silent and very still in the passenger’s seat. He stared straight ahead so unwaveringly that Tony wondered if he was seeing anything at all.The car was quiet enough for Tony to hear his breathing, slow and measured enough to set a metronome. It occurred to Tony right then that Banner was trying very hard not to scare him and act as normal as he remembered how to be, and he was grossly overcompensating by acting as still and quiet as a baby bird on the ground.

Nervous in the silence, Tony turned on the radio. The scanner cycled through a couple of country stations, a talk radio show and a lot of static before he stopped it on a promising drum solo. He drove for a while longer before he pulled off the road.

“This looks good,” he said. He stopped the car and got out. In the distance was a rock formation which looked vaguely climbable with the right equipment, though the view would probably be shit. Other than that, there was a fuck load of sand and scrub brush.

Tony leaned back against the car and stuck his head in. “Getting out? I don’t think this one comes equipped with a moon roof.”

The latched opened with a pop and the passenger door swung wide, but Banner didn’t exit the vehicle.

“Get out or we’re going back,” Tony warned.

Another few long seconds passed before Banner finally set his feet down on the earth. Tony could hear his breathing grow unsteady as he stood and took a few cautious steps away from the car. His head whipped around as he tried to keep his eyes on Tony over the roof of the car and take in his surroundings all at the same time.

Tony laughed and the sound carried far over the landscape. That made Banner pause and smile at him hesitantly. Tony closed the car door, stuck his hand in his pocket to close his fingers around the edge of the tranq gun, and wandered a little away. Behind him, he heard the other car door close and Banner’s shuffling steps.

Tony stopped when he was sure Banner was following. “There’s a meteor shower tonight.”

Banner’s head snapped towards the sky. He stood, staring hard, mouth opened a little.

The night sky was clear, and the moon was nothing but a shining sliver wire outline of a new moon. They both looked up, turning this way or that every now and again to see a new expanse of sky.

“I don’t see anything,” Banner murmured after a little while.

A few stars glittered, but a dusky orange haze obscured all but the brightest.

“It’s the light pollution from the factory,” Tony replied. “But let’s see what we can do.”

Tony trotted back to the car and fished in the center console for the satellite phone that came standard in all his company vehicles.   He dialed the main office, and turned to watch Banner as it rang. Banner was still staring up into the sky, barely blinking.

“Advanced Idea Mechanics,” a man’s voice answered the phone.

“This is Stark. I want all the exterior lights shut down for....an hour. Let’s say an hour.”

“I don’t have the authorization to—“ the voice sounded alarmed.

“Do you have caller ID? This is Tony Stark and I’m authorizing you to shut off the exterior lighting for an hour.”

“But—“

“You’re already fired. Want to start in on the severance package?”

“No, Mr. Stark. All the exterior lighting will be shut down for one hour.”

Tony shut the phone and shoved it in the pocket opposite the tranq gun. As he walked back to where his captive stood waiting, the lights on the horizon shut off in sequence, like a row of candles blown out. The only light was the blue-white glow of the energy binders lighting up Banner’s chest and face in half-shadows.

“Give me those,” Tony gestured to the binders when he was close enough to remove them.

Banner snatched his hands back away from Tony’s reach. “No!” he said.

Tony threw his hands in the air. “What are you so scared of? I’m not trying to set you up or anything.”

Eyes, narrowed into slits, glittering back the sparkling blue energy of the binders, glared at him. “What if I try to escape?”

“I’ll shoot you in the back. Feel better now?”

Expression unchanging, Banner slowly lowered his arms so that Tony could deactivate the cuffs. The air seemed too bright for a second after the light disappeared, and then they were plunged into the darkness of the desert.

“Oh.” Banner’s voice was quiet and deep with wonder. Tony could see him as a shadowy silhouette, tipping his head back to see the sky so far that he lost his balance and landed on his ass with a soft “oomph.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Not too worried about you making a run for it.”

But Banner wasn’t paying attention. He sat in the dirt, gazing up at the stars with his lips parted. As Tony’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed Banner’s hands reflexively clenching and unclenching the earth beneath them. But then his attention was drawn to the sky when he heard Banner’s awed gasp.

Every few moments, a silvery comet would leave a long streak across the inky sky. Sometimes the tail was short and bright, and other times it burned slowly so it left a long stream. Banner didn’t bother standing again. He bent his knees so his feet were flat on the sand and he could rest his elbows on them. After a few seconds of staring, Tony sank down to join him.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the cloudy expanse of the Milky Way came into view.

“An hour, huh?” Banner asked.

“You have pretty good hearing.”

He shrugged.

“I can tell them to keep the lights off longer,” Tony said.

Banner shrugged again. “An hour can be a long time.”

They sat in silence. A faint breeze rustled the bushes, but other than that, the desert was silent. He could hear Banner’s breathing if he tried hard enough. It was slow and steady, but easier than it had been in the car.

After a while, Tony couldn’t stand it anymore. “Really? You’re not going to even _try_ to make a break for it?”

“Is that what you want?” Banner murmured into the darkness.

“What do _you_ want, lab rat?”

Banner looked at him askance, but his expression was too difficult to read in just the light of the stars. He shook his head.

“Bullshit. I know better. I’ve been held for ransom a time or two, and I know better than to give any fucker any leverage against me. But that doesn’t mean that you stop wanting. But what have you got to lose?” Tony could feel his own heart in his throat, and he tried to swallow the feeling down.

Banner squeezed his eyes shut and hung his head. When he looked up again, tears traced his cheeks and his voice broke when he answered, “I don’t want to hurt anyone ever again.”

Tony opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again when nothing came out.

Banner folded his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “I killed my fiancée,” he said. “I transformed and I picked her up and crushed her against a wall.”

He was glad for the dark, then, to hide the tears that flooded his own eyes. “I’m sorry, Bruce,” Tony said.

“Not as much as I am,” Banner replied. “So, no. I’m not going to run. I’m done running. I deserve whatever’s in store for me.”

“You’re a very good lab rat.”

“Thanks…I guess.”

“My fiancée killed herself.” The words tumbled out of Tony’s mouth before he even knew what he was saying.

Banner didn’t answer, but he went very still and silent, waiting for Tony to continue.

“She was the lead on Extremis. She thought it was ready, but I told her she was stupid to test it on herself. She disagreed. Said that she would never try something on someone else that she wasn’t sure was safe.”

“Uncontrollable exothermic reaction?” Banner said.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“You talk to yourself a lot while you work. What was her name?”

The tears that had been threatening finally broke, just as his lips formed her name. “Maya,” Tony choked out. “There wasn’t even anything left. Not even a shadow on the wall.”

He missed her so much. So fucking much.  And it didn't really ever get better, though he could forget for hours at a time with the music loud enough and a good problem to solve.  Maya would have had a field day with Banner. She would have holed up in the lab with Banner for hours, talking a mile a minute about his research with a flirtatious smile, every so often tucking a strand of long, dark hair behind her ear. That’s what Maya was like. She didn’t care whose side anyone was on; if you had something that she wanted, then she was your friend and she’d give you everything you wanted in return.

Tony swiped at the tears that wouldn’t stop. Grief pooled in his stomach, and he sobbed so hard he could barely breathe. He usually tried not to think about her, and it was easy to distract himself with work. There was always something to do. But he knew he hadn’t ever given himself time to process Maya’s death. Even at the funeral, he had still been in too much of a state of shock for grief.

In between gasps, he felt a warm weight settle across his shoulders and pull him in closer. And, in that moment, with a firm hand rubbing his back, Tony felt his world collapse in on itself as his grief burned out like hydrogen gas from a star. He was sure that he would, too, explode, if it wasn’t for the arms around him tight.

He didn’t know how much of the hour was left by the time he pushed back and Bruce let go at the resistance. The darkness was deep and a cold wind kicked up some sand into his eyes, so he rubbed at them. When he looked up again, Bruce was outlined against the silvery stars, all negative space in context of the wide galaxy behind him. The other man opened his mouth to say something, but then his gaze shifted up over Tony’s head and beyond.

Bruce’s eyes grew wide and, at the same time, he reached out to grab Tony by the straps of his Kevlar vest and pull him down to the ground. He rolled as they fell, so that Tony landed with his face in the dirt. Sand and bits of gravel scraped his cheek and tangled in his goatee. He was about to lift his head to see what the hell was going on when he heard a rushing roar that he would recognize anywhere. There was only one sound like it in the world, he was sure, because he invented it.

Tony kept his face pressed to the cold sand, the sharp grains digging into the lines around his eyes and mouth. He shut his eyes, and every muscle in his body tensed. Every frantic calculation he made told him not to run because he would never make it out of the blast radius in time. He had to stay down, under the shockwave as much as he could.

The missile sailed over in a long arc. Tony lifted his eyes just enough to see it land and explode in the distance. He didn’t understand. He knew those missiles and it should have hit…well, a lot closer than it did, unless something interrupted its trajectory.

But he couldn’t stop to analyze the situation. He had to grab Banner and get the fuck back to Iron Works. He pushed himself up and stumbled in the general direction of the car. Patting down his pockets for the keys, he came up with the satellite phone and tried to dial as he ran.

The earth shook beneath Tony’s feet, and he fell sprawled on his knees, the satellite phone skittering across the sand into the brush. His ears rang, but the burn of the abrasions on his hands kept him grounded. There was a whining diminuendo, and Tony barely had the time to turn his head to see the white-hot streak of three more repulsor missiles overhead.

Tony tried to get his feet under him so he could run, but nothing seemed to work properly. He scrambled for shelter, but there was nothing but scraggly bushes and he couldn’t find the phone, even though he scraped his hands up in the thorns looking for it. And all around him, smoke and fire and the smell of burning metal blurred together.

Suddenly, a bomb landed right next to him, sending displaced rock and debris raining down. But it didn’t explode. Tony opened eyes he hadn’t realized were squeezed shut, and the first thing he saw was an enormous green foot. He followed the foot—seeing without believing—up a leg like a tree trunk, to a heaving chest, and eventually met the dark eyes of the Hulk.

The green giant was silhouetted against the burning smoke, half-buried in his crater and screaming his rage to the sky, and Tony understood that it was no bomb that had landed next to him. But there wasn’t much time to think because another series of flashes on the horizon heralded another barrage in the air.

Before he could react, a pair of arms wrapped around him from hips to shoulders and hugged him to that solid chest. Pressed against the behemoth, the sounds of the explosions and the smell of the smoke were muffled enough that Tony could at least get his own breathing under control. But he didn’t have much time before he felt muscles bunch like coiled springs of steel, and then the Hulk launched them into the sky before the next missiles could reach them.

They flew in a perfect parabola, back towards the base, too close for the long-range missiles to be any danger. Tony could feel the moment of weightlessness at the top of their arc, and then they were free-falling down to the sand. His face was pressed too close to the Hulk’s skin, and his breath was too caught in his throat to scream, but he wished he could, to at least release some of the pressure in his chest.

The last thing Tony saw before he passed out was the desert floor rushing up to meet him.

****

The sky was still dark when Tony woke up. He was sore and bruised, but the memory of that angry bellow was enough to push himself to his hands and knees. His mouth was full of sand, and it caked his face and hair. He coughed and spat into the dirt, but it didn’t really help.

Groaning, he sat back on his heels and surveyed the area.

Off in the distance, the missile fires burned, too far away to be any concern. Closer, in the other direction, the lights to Iron Works created a dusky glow.

Five feet away, naked except for the silver collar around his neck, Bruce Banner lay passed out cold in the dirt, a thin trail of blood trickling from his nose.

 


	5. Chapter 5

“You can’t take him!”

Killian sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He leaned his hip back on the gurney he had brought and crossed his arms loosely across his chest. His face looked calm, serene, but Tony knew a fake when he saw one.

“How else am I supposed to get you the data you need? You’re the one crying that it’s impossible to figure out how to stabilize Extremis without knowing how Banner stabilizes after a transformation.”

Tony looked into the cage. Bruce was lying still and pale on the floor, in the same position as when they had dumped him back in his cage. Dried blood streaked his cheek and down his neck from where he had bled from the nose and ears, though Killian’s scans said he hadn’t suffered any damage beyond ruptured capillaries. But he was exhausted and hurting. And awake.

“What were you doing out there on the range, anyway, Tony?” Killian asked, a little more gently.

Tony turned so his back was against the cage and leaned against it so that he partially hid Banner from Killian’s view. “I didn’t know it was a blast day,” he said.

“It’s on the master calendar!”

“I lose track of the days, Killian!”

The businessman’s face clouded. “Tony, you sure went through a lot of trouble getting everyone out of the way for you to not know what day it was, and you didn’t tell anyone where you were going or anything that would suggest you were driving Banner out to the range!”

“What are you implying, Aldrich?”

“That you don’t check calendars.” He sighed again, deeper this time. “Look, are you going to get out of the way so I can at least salvage something out of this mess?”

Tony looked at Bruce. He hadn’t moved, but his quick brown eyes looked right back at Tony. He saw resignation and acceptance there, and the corner of Bruce’s mouth quirked up in what might have been a reassuring smile.

Killian was right. Tony stepped back.

After Killian took Bruce, Tony spent a long time staring into the empty cage.

****

“What did the Army do to you?”

“You can read about it, I’m sure.”

Tony shrugged. “A lot of it is blacked out. It was part of the deal when we bought you. I got raw results from experiments, but not methods or anything like that.” That was a partial truth. He had some, but he suspected there was more to the story, and he wanted to hear it from Bruce’s lips. After that trip outside to the see the stars, Bruce had been downright conversational.

Bruce took a deep breath. “A lot of sensory deprivation, prolonged exposure to...well, a lot of things, isolation, some stuff with inducing hallucinations…things like that.”

“You know, Killian is probably going to do the same thing here.”

Banner’s voice was calm—tired—when he answered. “I know. But it’s better here than most of the places I’ve been, so I have to appreciate that. Whatever it is.” He shifted over on the cot so that he could see Tony better. “I’ve never had anyone to talk to before,” he said. “I mean, even before…this.”

Tony scoffed. “Lucky you. You get the most sarcastic bastard of the century as a confidante. Oh, it gets better! The sarcastic bastard keeps you in a cage and tortures you!”

Bruce chuckled and it was so genuine that Tony was taken aback. “I’m always going to be in a cage,” Bruce said. His voice was deep with resignation. “I deserve it. I’m a monster. I’ve murdered innocent people.”

Tony paused and looked up. “The soldiers from the videos?”

“Yes. And others.”

“It looked to me like they were the bad guys, Labbit!” Tony said.

“No,” Bruce shook his head, “they were doing their job. Following orders.”

Tony sighed and rubbed at the sore spot forming between his eyes. “I don’t know why everyone wants to make it into some complicated moral conundrum. Are they trying to kill you? Then they’re the bad guys. What’s so hard about that?”

Banner didn’t answer, but he lay for a long time staring at the ceiling with his eyes open. After a while, his quiet voice floated over, “And you aren’t the one who’s torturing me.” He turned his head towards Tony and said, stronger, “What do you get out of all of this?”

“I get to do whatever I want, whenever I want.” Banner just stared at him, patiently waiting for the rest. After a moment, Tony continued, “I get to invent. It turns out that running a company is really _fucking_ hard. I don’t mean it’s rocket surgery, because God knows Killian couldn’t do it then, but it takes an 80-hour work week. And you have to deal with people—so many people who are liars and thieves and know all the legal loopholes and verbal traps. It’s _exhausting_. So Killian does all the boring tedious business and I’m the genius behind the scenes.”

“Anyone in the world would work for you. Why him?”

Tony rolled his stool up to Banner’s cage, gauntlet on one hand and screwdriver in the other. “Because he’s weak.” Tony pointed the screwdriver at Banner. “You know it’s true. He’s a puppet by nature and he needs someone on the other end of the strings. He’s easy to control.” He went back to tightening the bolts as he spoke.

“You wouldn’t even recognize the man he was when we met. He was this slurring, myopic, twisted wreck.”

“What happened?” Banner asked, and there was genuine curiosity in his voice.

“I made him a shitload of money and he pumped it all into his looks. Plastic surgery, experimental therapies, bathing in virgin African rhino blood…name it and he did it. And I taught him how to present himself so he didn’t look like such a simpering fool all the time. A lot of people think Killian wants to create the perfect super soldier, the new Captain America. Really, he just wants to get laid.” Banner snorted and choked on a laugh. “But as long as he’s keeping my company in order and making me money, I’m not too concerned with how he does business.”

Banner closed his eyes and didn’t answer, but his breathing changed noticeably, going slow and deep.

“And anyway,” Tony continued, “Killian is loyal to me. He came after me when I was kidnapped, and he kept looking after everyone else stopped caring. I would have never made it out of there if he hadn’t ransomed me out.”

Tony looked away. “Now you, on the other hand, I don’t think you’re anyone’s puppet. And _that’s_ why you’re in that cage.”

Still no answer, but when Tony glanced up, there was a wide smile on Banner’s face, like it was some kind of compliment.

After a while, Tony realized it was.

“Have you ever thought that if you pissed him off enough he could blow the elevator shaft pretty easily?” Banner said, the smile on his face making his voice a little brighter.

Tony scoffed. “He’s not that fucking stupid. He knows it’ll take more than burying me in a cave to keep me from coming back for him.”

“I don’t know,” Banner mused. “Seems to be doing a pretty good job of it so far.”

****

“Change the frequency!” Bruce called over the racket.

“What?” Tony shouted over the roar of the repulsor boots.

“Based on the gibberish you’ve been spouting, whatever electronic frequency you’re on is resonating with the oscillators in the joints. That’s why it ‘feels all rattily.’” Bruce turned over on his cot so that he was lying on his stomach with his chin on his arms.

Tony shut down the boot.   “How do you know that? You can’t even see the models or the simulations from over there!” He had made sure of it. He really had. Had Banner been able to hack Netflix and get into his private servers? Surely, he wasn’t capable of—

Bruce laughed. “You talk incessantly to yourself and you repeat yourself so often I don’t even need to write the calculations down. I was just trying to solve the problem so you would shut up.”

Tony was ready to turn on him with anger, with wrath and fury, but when he reached down it just wasn’t there. No, he was a little amazed, truth be told. The materials he was working with were not common alloys, so to keep the properties straight to begin with would require some serious brain power.

Even if Tony did repeat himself. Which he didn’t. That much.

He rubbed at his goatee with one hand and wrapped the other around his ribs as he turned to regard Bruce. Sure, he talked a lot. But he meant a _lot_ , and usually far too fast for the people around him to follow. But Bruce could not only keep up, he could follow along in his head—which meant he had all those figures and facts filed away.

That night, when Tony returned to his apartment, he pulled up Bruce’s file again…but he closed it without looking at it. Then he started a new search.

He found what he was looking for published under an R.B. Banner, Ph.D. Tony poured a few fingers of Scotch and settled back to read.

Sometime in the early morning, Tony finished reading the highlights of R.B. Banner, Ph.D.’s research. He was brilliant. Utterly, stupendously brilliant. He had such a wide range of knowledge that he could make connections across disciplines that few had the experience or intellect to do, and even fewer would want to try.

And he worked alone. Almost always alone. But, from what Tony read, it was probably because he never found anyone to keep up with him, though others interpreted that differently: in interviews and psych evals, his colleagues called him reserved, aloof, condescending…except one, Ross. Betty Ross. She apparently worked in cell biology, so Tony pulled up her research as well.

The most recent was published six months ago. Tony nearly spit his drink across the screen. Six months ago, but Banner had been either on the run or prisoner for nearly a decade. A few clicks and he was at Culver University’s webpage, looking at Dr. Ross’s biography as current department chair.

Betty Ross was still alive. Tony broke into her medical records and found the incident that Banner had referred to, but it looked like she had suffered a broken arm and a bad concussion, but she hadn’t died. And Bruce—who was down in the workshop right now, probably wasting away to the tune of recorded bird of paradise mating rituals—thought he had killed her.

****

When Tony returned to the workshop, Banner was curled up in his blanket underneath the cot. Tony crouched down to see if he was awake and saw a pair of brown eyes blinking back at him.

“Your research on anti-electron particle collisions is astounding. And don’t get me started on thermodynamics.”

Bruce grimaced. “Thanks.”

“Bruce, who told you Betty was dead?” He closed his eyes and turned away into the dark seam where the floor met the wall. “Who told you, Bruce?” Tony pestered. “Come on, lab rat, name names.”

“Everyone,” Bruce said, though it was a bit hard to tell because he choked on the word.

Tony stood and fished his phone out of his pocket. He pulled up the Culver University roster and sent the image over to the big screen on the cage wall. “Look,” he urged.

Bruce didn’t move, so Tony knocked on the glass a few times before he got bored and gave up. He left the image on the screen. Bruce would see it eventually.

It took a few hours. Tony was buried deep in coding Extremis simulations with the new data when he heard a gasp. He turned to see Bruce standing, his hands pressed against the screen, covering Betty’s picture from view.

“Turn it off,” he cried. “Please just turn it off.”

To Tony’s surprise, the silver collar around Bruce’s neck lit up like a Christmas tree, blinking through a cycle of colors like mad.

“Hey, lab rat, just look for a second! Look at the date!”

“Fuck you, Stark.” He sounded so tired.

So Tony pulled up the livestream from the AIM satellite currently over New England and zoomed in on the address he found in the staff directory. There was a blue sedan in the driveway of a town house. A wide green lawn led up to a porch with a white railing. Tony zoomed in to a bay window framed in pale wood. There, just visible, was the profile of a woman with long, dark hair reading in the sunlight.

Bruce’s knees shook and he sank slowly back down on the cot. He blinked and stared. Then he laughed, long and hard, until tears leaked down his cheeks. He grabbed the blanket from under the cot and wrapped back up in it, but his eyes didn’t leave the screen, and there was a wide smile across his face.

Tony smirked. “See, lab rat. It’s not so bad. And just think, if they lied to you about that, what else isn’t true?”

The smile didn’t leave Bruce’s face for hours.

 


	6. Chapter 6

The next time Killian took Banner, Tony went to the apartment for a nap in a decent bed. But Banner was already back in the cage when Tony returned. He was a mess. He hadn’t bothered with the clothes he had left behind, and he was trembling under the thin blanket with his back pressed tight against the wall.

Tony knocked softly on the glass, but there was no response. He didn’t look sedated. In fact, he was agitated, lips moving to form words that came out as little cries. Without thinking, Tony grabbed a bottle of cold water from the mini-fridge, unlocked the cage, and went inside.

Without the layers of glass between them, Tony could hear how labored Bruce’s breathing was. He was damp with sweat, too, and when he shifted Tony could see red, irritated skin around the edges of the collar. But when he reached out to shake his shoulder, his skin was shockingly cold. And he wouldn’t wake up.

“Come on, Honey Badger. Wake up. Bruce. You’re scaring me, Buddy.” Tony sat on the cot and gathered Bruce’s head and shoulders into his lap, raising him up so it was easier to breathe. He was so cold. “Don’t give up on me now.”

He was about to get an electric blanket or crank up the heat or do something other than just sit there, but then Bruce’s eyebrows drew together and he whined through barely-parted lips.

“There you are, Bruce,” Tony breathed in a sigh of relief. “You had me worried.”

But he wasn’t fully aware of his surroundings for another few long moments. Tony saw the moment he realized where he was, and he tried to push back and away, but the attempt was clumsy. Still, Tony knew better, and he let go of the other man and moved out of his personal space.

“It’s ok,” Tony tried to soothe, but the wild spark of fear in Bruce’s eyes was alarming, even if the collar wasn’t giving any warnings.

He stumbled out of the cage, leaving the door open in case Bruce felt trapped—then on second thought, closed it firmly behind him because Bruce would never leave the cage door open like that.

Thanks to his new roommate, there was a stash of extra blankets and towels near the shower. He filled an empty bottle with hot water from the tap and wrapped it in a towel before grabbing a clean blanket from the stack. Arms full, he approached the cage door.

Bruce was awake, looking even more miserable than when he was asleep. But the fear in his eyes was replaced by his usual resignation, so Tony guessed he knew where he was.

“Can I come in?” Tony asked.

Bruce blinked at him. “Yeah,” he said slowly.

He unlocked the door and stepped back inside, closing the door behind him.

“You should keep the door open,” Bruce said, voice dry with exhaustion. “In case you need an escape route.”

Tony handed the hot water bottle to Bruce. “Here, try to warm up.”

Bruce hugged it to his chest, and he was so distracted by the sudden, blissful warmth that he didn’t react when Tony draped the clean blanket over him, then carefully drew the sweat-damp blanket out from underneath and stuffed it through the hatch. He looked better, breathing easier with a little warmth in his chest. But there were still deep lines around his eyes.

“You’re in pain,” Tony said. “Can I do anything?”

“No. It’ll pass. You already did a lot.”

“Shit,” Tony said. “I shouldn’t have woken you up. I should’ve let you sleep through it.”

A small, honest to goodness smile crossed Bruce’s wan face.

“Want me to get the dart gun?”

“No,” Bruce’s answer surprised Tony. “No. I’m fine. I’ll be ok. Thank you.”

“Ok.”

Tony didn’t really feel right just leaving him shivering alone, but at the same time, there wasn’t a whole lot of room in the cage. Standing just took up more room, so he sat on the floor with his back against the glass. It didn’t seem to matter much to Bruce.   He watched Tony with tired, wary eyes. He would let them close for a few minutes before snapping open again.

That routine got boring pretty quickly, so Tony turned to lean his shoulder against the glass and look out over the shop. The view was quite different on this side of the glass. There was the empty crash pad right in front of the cage, and then he could see a row of desks and the backs of the monitors. From the floor, everything looked much bigger than it really was. He really did feel like a mouse in a cage.

“How do you stand it?” Tony asked aloud.

“I don’t know. Locked up in lab in some basement somewhere, subjected to tests that I don’t really understand? It’s a lot like grad school, but with more sleep.”

A short, barking laugh broke from Tony’s chest. “I never went to grad school.”

“No? Well it’s hard to find colleges that offer advanced degrees in Machiavellian Business Administration and still have a good party scene.”

Bruce was getting tired. He could hear it in his voice, more sadly ironic than sarcastic.

“I would not go for the MMBA,” Tony scoffed. “That is so 1970’s James Bond Villain of the Month.”

But Bruce didn’t rise to the bait. His eyes closed and stayed shut, and his breathing evened out as his tight grip on the hot water bottle eased. He didn’t look particularly peaceful. On the contrary, he looked frightened and vulnerable and just generally like shit.

Tony didn’t want to admit it, but the whole situation—Extremis, Killian, Bruce—wasn’t working out. Even with the post-transformation data, he was missing something vital, something he didn’t even know to look for.

With a heavy sigh, he heaved himself to his feet. He ran a hand through Bruce’s hair, all soft bouncy curls now that he had a chance to shower regularly. He glanced over his shoulder one more time before locking the cage door behind him.

****

“Look here, lab rat, I’m beginning to think that if we’re going to solve this whole Extremis problem, you’re on the wrong side of that glass.”

Armed with a red dry-erase marker, Tony began writing equations across the glass of the cage in neat, blocky figures. He started in the top left corner of the cage, as far up as he could reach, and wrote it out like it was a giant notebook, adding diagrams and drawings as needed. Bruce was on his feet in heartbeat, just on the other side of the glass, watching Tony as he unfurled the secrets of Extremis, the Iron Man armor, and even his own DNA, reading it like a book. Actually, by the look on his face, it was as if he was reading a love letter.

When Tony was done, writing wrapped around the glass and Bruce paced back and forth, arms crossed and eyebrows drawn down in contemplation. Tony retrieved a green marker from a drawer. Bruce didn’t even look up from the makeshift whiteboard until he opened the hatch and rolled the marker across the floor to bump against his foot. Then he looked down at it in surprised, as if some tiny creature had just managed to get inside his cage.

Slowly, he bent down and picked it up.

Within hours, there was almost as much green writing on the wall as red. Some of it was repetitive where Bruce had recopied equations for his own notation, but a lot of the green highlighted alternative ways to attack a problem, or added notes about neurology next to the computer coding. Bruce’s writing was much different from Tony’s, messier, less measured. And he wrote backwards so that their writing formed one cohesive piece.

But all that scribbling had led the two scientists to the same conclusion: staring at the wall, willing the answers to appear. Bruce sat on his cot in lotus position while Tony faced him slouched in an office chair. They would change position every now and again. Tony paced, and Bruce moved closer to erase a piece of an equation, just to rewrite the same way it was before.

Jefferson Airplane played on the stereo and Bruce nodded along absently to the music, but his glazed eyes indicated his mind was somewhere else.

“Have you checked the telomerized algorithm?” Bruce murmured, the first sound he had made in nearly an hour.

“What?” Tony didn’t quite catch what he had said because he was muttering and Tony had been caught in his own thoughts.

Bruce’s eyes refocused as he came back to himself. He opened his mouth to repeat himself, but he was interrupted by the electronic ding that indicated someone was coming down the elevator.

“Oh fuck,” Bruce mouthed.

Their eyes locked through the equations on the glass. “Erase it!” Tony hissed.

Both of them scrambled to erase their work. Bruce used his hands at first, but it left streaks of green across the glass, so he took the blanket off the bed to get the last of it. Tony did the same with a shop towel, tossing it behind a desk just as the elevator opened.

Killian came in, and if he noticed Bruce’s agitation or Tony’s slightly wild expression, he didn’t say anything. He just pushed the heavy metal gurney in front of him, though he did frown a bit when he saw Bruce standing in the middle of the cage.

“You really ought to keep him drugged,” Killian said absently as he glanced around for the dart gun.

Bruce shot a look at Tony when Killian turned his back, and the near-panic in his eyes was clear. His hands shook as he went through his usual routine of stripping, and he quickly flipped over the edge of blanket that was covered in green marker dust.

“No,” Tony said. “Not today, Aldrich.”

Killian paused in his search for the gun. He looked over at Banner, who was lying on his cot naked, again.

“Don’t take him today. He hasn’t been feeling well.”

Killian’s eyes narrowed and he straightened a bit. “Not feeling well?” He frowned. “Tony, what do you think is going on here?” He shook his head. “Where’s the gun?”

Keeping his eyes on Killian, Tony leaned over a desk, slid open the top drawer and took the tranq gun out. He slowly crossed the short distance between them, but he maneuvered so he was between Killian and the cage before he offered him the gun.

The businessman smiled when he took it, but he immediately popped the cartridge out, leaving it to clink onto the concrete floor, and took a different cartridge out of his pocket to load into the gun.

“He’s exhausted. He needs a break.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

But Tony didn’t move. “He’s mine,” the engineer stated firmly.

Killian gave him a bored, condescending look before reaching out and pushing Tony right in the solar plexus. The movement looked so casual on Killian’s part, but the force of the gesture sent Tony falling backwards into the wall with the air knocked from his lungs.

As Tony lay on the floor gasping for breath, Killian shot Bruce through the hatch. Bruce barely had time to sit down on the cot before he collapsed into a heap of bare limbs. Killian popped the empty cartridge out of the gun as he regarded his partner with a sad, pitying expression. A cruelly powerful hand grabbed Tony by the back of the shirt and hauled him up so he was sitting against the wall, and Killian crouched down so they were looking eye to eye.

“Tony,” he said softly, “you’re not yourself. Try to get some sleep, if you can. Have a few drinks if that’s what it takes. But don’t forget why we’re here.”

From where he was, he could see that Bruce was passed out cold, and the dread in Tony’s stomach was so heavy that it physically weighed him down. He couldn’t move. It felt like he was paralyzed with fear and yet he knew that if he tried to move, he would start shaking so badly he might never stop, and he couldn’t afford to show any weakness right now.

Killian pushed the gurney past him, strapped Bruce down, and left through the elevator without saying another word.

“Shit!” Tony gasped. “Goddam motherfucking—FUCK!”

Pain radiated from the center of his chest outward and down both arms as he crawled his way back to his feet. Breathing hurt, and he wasn’t positive that he didn’t have a cracked sternum or a broken rib or two.

But Killian had barely touched him. He looked as if he had been flicking away a fly.

Tony stumbled over to the computer and sank heavily into a chair. He pulled up his shirt to see a bruise already darkening the center of his chest. He let the shirt fall back down and buried his head in his hands.

He knew what he would find even before he typed in the first query, but he had to know for sure before he acted. He needed evidence to confront Killian with. And he needed to know exactly what he was dealing with before he lost any more control over the situation.

Breaking through Killian’s firewalls took a lot longer than Tony expected. All his usual backdoors were closed as soon as he found them and his override codes weren’t working. He couldn’t even upload his password cracker without it crashing.

Finally, Tony gained access through some lower-level lab tech’s account, and from there he could get into Killian’s servers. But, really, he shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was over what he had found.

First of all, Killian had dozens of biochemists and medical researchers on AIM payroll. That wasn’t very special. After Maya’s death, Tony had given him free reign to put together a new team, but these scientists had all been blackballed from the medical community for some reason or another. Sure, they were doctors, but they had all had their licenses revoked.

So he wanted cheap, specialized labor who wouldn’t ask too many questions. Tony used the same hiring practices for his engineers. In fact, it usually worked to his favor to have a staff who played fast and loose with things like morals and ethics. But Killian obviously didn’t trust the guys. The Extremis project was split into so many divisions and subdivisions that there wasn’t any way for one group to recreate the nanites on their own.

But, as far as Tony read, they hadn’t been successful yet. In fact, they hadn’t made any real progress for two weeks.

Two weeks—Tony rubbed his sore chest as he leaned back a little in the chair. But Killian had taken Bruce nearly every day. Tony dug deeper for the lab reports. At first, all he could find were the same bland methods and results that Killian forwarded to him. He found what he was looking for in a folder labeled “unclassified mammalian experiments.”

As far as he could tell, Killian was trying to kill Bruce. He had tried asphyxiation, electrocution, and exsanguination in several different ways, testing the limits of Bruce’s body and the Hulk’s healing ability. He brought Bruce to the brink of death over and over again, just barely refraining from pushing him over the edge and triggering the Hulk.

The image of the silver collar, blinking red and green and blue, came to Tony’s mind. Killian must be trusting the collar to keep the Hulk from awakening and crushing the life out of everyone and everything in his path, but Tony had witnessed firsthand that no contraption would keep the Hulk contained when he wanted out. He could still smell the fire and smoke from the missile explosions when he closed his eyes.

But, the thought came annoyingly slowly to Tony’s mind, that would mean that the only reason the Hulk hadn’t crushed Killian during one of his experiments was…Bruce.

He had to go get Bruce.

****

Tony took a deep breath, his hand on the door to Killian’s lab, and steeled himself for what he would find beyond it.

The room was surprisingly silent, empty except two occupants standing at consoles and staring at a glass wall. As Tony approached, he could see why. The clear blast wall shielded the control room and separated them from Bruce. There, inside the glaringly white room, was his lab rat. His mouth kept opening and closing like he was gasping for air, but no sound came out; Tony understood the room must have been sound proofed as well as shielded, and he wouldn’t hear Bruce even if he were screaming. Killian had him strapped to a stainless steel table in the middle of the laboratory with binders across his ankles, thighs, wrists and chest, and the LEDs on the collar around his neck flashed through the color spectrum. But that’s not what had him gasping. A metal cable as thick as Tony’s forearm was attached to Bruce’s solar plexus by about a dozen needles protruding from the end. Then again, as Tony drew closer to the glass, he could see that they were actually thin metal arms that seemed to writhe and shift under Bruce’s skin. The bound man moaned and thrashed on the table as they moved. Tony’s eyes followed the cable, through the wall, to a monitor which showed several different graphs in green and red, though he couldn’t read them from where he was standing. Killian was engrossed in the readouts and didn’t pay much mind to him entering the lab.

“What are you doing?” Tony tried to make his voice sound as casual as possible.

“Measuring organ regeneration rates,” Killian murmured. “Trying to see if it’s changed since the post-transformation measurements.”

“Why? How’s that going to help?”

“You tell me, Tony,” Killian replied. He tilted his head and considered the graphs, then adjusted a dial on the touchscreen. Bruce’s face twisted.

“It doesn’t,” Tony snapped. “Turn it off. Stop it.”

Killian didn’t turn it off. He turned the screen towards Tony and flicked it over to a table of numbers. “What are you talking about? You use this data all the time.”

“ _Used_ this data, Killian. You don’t need to keep doing it to him.”

Killian was a sadist, Tony knew that. He used it to his advantage more times than he could count. But to see him with Bruce strapped to a table just so he could feel like the bigger man for a few moments…well, that was beyond what Tony was willing to tolerate.

But then Killian turned to face Tony, and the look on his face changed everything. A feral snarl distorted his features into something savage, glowing with pure anger.

“You’re really questioning me in front of my colleagues?” he bit out, pointing to the stout, mousy doctor manning the other monitor. The man squeaked and promptly fled.

“Aldrich,” Tony said as normally as he could, “I was worried about you. You’ve been down here for hours. You need a break. How long have you been at this?”

The concern in Tony’s voice seemed to deflate Killian’s wrath. It was as if he expected Tony’s disapproval and was ready to meet it…but since Tony didn’t sound particularly disapproving…

“I thought you’d be upset,” Killian said slowly. He sighed and ran a hand through his perfectly slicked hair. “Yeah, you’re right. I could use a break. Do you think you could?” He made a vague gesture at Bruce, panting behind the glass. “Just for a few hours. I’ll take back over after I make some calls from the office.”

“Not a problem,” Tony said after him, and if his reply lacked gusto, well Killian didn’t seem to notice.

Tony didn’t trust Killian to leave right away, so he busied himself with reading over Killian’s notes and tweaking at his ideas in blocky pencil strokes. And, sure enough, Killian had something he’d forgotten and needed, and his eyes roved beneath his sunglasses, unabashedly taking in the sight beyond the glass.

Then he was gone again.

Tony immediately powered down the device burrowing its way through Bruce’s abdomen. He watched in disgust as the thin metal arms retracted, dripping dark trails of sticky blood across Bruce’s body and the floor below. Once he was sure the machine was completely off, Tony opened the door to the chamber. Bruce tried to pick up his head to see who was coming, and his eyes went wide with shock when he saw Tony. He didn’t say anything, but he started to shake so badly that Tony could see his entire body trembling.

Tony used his phone to access the external surveillance cameras. After he confirmed Killian’s departure, he released Bruce’s arms one at a time so he was lying in a more natural position. He moaned when his joints were manipulated.

“This is as bad as it’s gonna get, Bruce,” Tony said. He meant it as an empty platitude, but it came out with conviction. “Rest for a few hours. Then he’s going to come back.” Tony didn’t know whether it was very good or very bad that Bruce didn’t react. Not even a shudder. “Good,” he said. Yeah, he went with good.

“Now,” he continued, “you just gotta ride this out as best you can. We gotta get you out of here.”

Bruce laughed, and the sound was dry and raspy.

“No one is coming to rescue me. It’s not like that. I’m the thing you save people from. Why,” Bruce’s voice was nothing more than shaky breath, “Why don’t you kill me?”

Tony’s hand tightened in Bruce’s hair and he leaned down to press their foreheads together. “I don’t know how,” he admitted. “I don’t think I can.”

Bruce cried some, and drank water just to throw it up. Tony found a thin sheet to throw over him, which seemed to help more than the water. Eventually, he calmed, though the sickness didn’t seem to leave him. After a few more minutes, he looked like he was about to pass out, which gave Tony an idea.

“I’m going to be right back,” he promised.

“No!” Bruce cried. “Please, don’t leave.”

He tried to reach out and snag Tony’s shirt, but he was far too slow. Tony caught his hand in a warm grip and folded his arm back down to his side. He pulled the blanket up further so it covered most of Bruce’s chest. “I’m coming right back. I’m going to get the sedatives and drug you down so far that you’re useless to Killian.”

He hustled back to his own workshop, through the underground service corridors that connected the laboratories like an ant colony. There, he gathered a handful of tranquilizer cartridges before hurrying back to Bruce.

“Hey, still with me?” he asked as he approached the table. Bruce hadn’t moved an inch from where he had been left.

“Still here,” Bruce managed to answer.

Tony grunted. “Yeah, I was afraid of that.” Bruce didn’t smile, but he did look at the sedatives in Tony’s hand. “These should keep you down for a good long while.”   Bruce didn’t answer.

Tony found a syringe and loaded the first cartridge. He didn’t ask for permission before sliding it under Bruce’s skin, but he didn’t exactly get an argument.  “Can’t overdose, right?” Tony thought aloud as he loaded the second one.

“We can try,” Bruce said, but his voice was already slurred and faint.

Tony injected him with the second and then with a third before gripping Bruce’s hand tight.

“Go to sleep, Bruce. When you wake up, you’ll be safe and sound back in your cage.”

Bruce’s eyes blinked up at him once, twice, then closed.


	7. Chapter 7

“What did you do?” Killian asked, his voice deadly cold.

Tony leaned back in his chair at the control panel. The probes were back at their work, but Bruce was blissfully unconscious through it all.

“Drugged him,” Tony said, letting his voice lilt up at the end like a question. “You told me that I ought to keep him drugged, and he was pretty awake.” Tony frowned at the graphs. “He doesn’t need to be conscious, does he?”

“Hmmm, no, not necessarily,” Killian said, though his mouth pressed into a hard line as he peered through the glass. After a second, it turned upward into a forced smile. “You make me nervous when you do what I say. That’s all.”

Tony snorted. “That’s what I get for trying to be the good guy.”

Killian didn’t answer, his attention focused on Bruce. While he was distracted, Tony wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. His heart was racing, too. He had to calm down before Killian noticed the sweat threatening to drip down his hairline.

After a minute or two, Killian heaved a bored sigh and turned away from the glass. He stalked over to Tony, and Tony had to force the air in and out of his lungs as normally as he could when Killian leaned over him to grab the edge of the monitor and swivel it away from him. The musk of Killian’s cologne was thick in his nose, and he wanted to push him away but he forced himself still.

Killian flipped through the graphs and readouts with another sigh. He leaned his arm on the back of Tony’s chair and glanced at the limp figure through the glass again.

“I think he’s done for the day,” he said. “I’ll have someone move him back downstairs, but I have to go pack. There’s some business out of state I must attend to. Boring, but important things. Don’t worry about it.”

“I never do.”

A bright grin split across Killian’s face. “That’s right.” The smile fell. “I’m leaving tonight, Tony. We have to talk before then.”

Tony nodded. “I hear you. Tonight. Talk. Got it. Leave me your honey-do list and I promise I’ll water the houseplants.”

“I wouldn’t trust you with a fichus,” Killian answered fondly as he left out the door.

Again, Tony waited and watched over the security camera until he saw that Killian was gone. Then he powered down the machines all the way and left Bruce in peace until the lab minions came to cart him through the passages and down the elevator. Still, Tony insisted on supervising them the entire way until they laid him back down on his cot, at which time Tony told them to get the hell out.

As soon as they left, Tony let himself into the cage and knelt by Bruce’s side. He was still deeply sedated, but he was breathing steadily even if it was a bit slow. His bare chest was a mess. The puncture wounds where the mechanical arms had penetrated his skin still oozed a bit of blood, and there was a mass of bruising spreading under his skin outward from the center of his chest. Tony knew Bruce’s rate of healing far surpassed a normal human, but the damage still made his stomach clench.

A warm, wet towel took care of the layers of blood on Bruce’s chest, and he was already breathing better by the time Tony was done cleaning off the worst of it. He briefly considered dressing Bruce, but it was easier to just wrap the blankets around him.

After making sure Bruce was settled in as close to his usual environment as possible, Tony set up at the computer that overlooked the cage and began to arrange secure transportation.

As soon as the lab rat woke up enough to move, they were going to get the fuck out of New Mexico.

****

Bruce slept through most of Tony’s frantic preparations. Once, he turned over a little too violently and woke himself up, but he only looked up at Tony with red, bleary eyes before looking around his cage and then collapsing back into unconsciousness with a sigh of relief.

It was better that way. Tony was pretty sure Bruce would fight him if he said he planned to break him out. If he asked, he would say that he was moving Bruce to a more secure facility, one where Killian—or the military, or anyone else—couldn’t ever find him.

He had mansions all over the world. Hell, he could buy Bruce an island if the guy wanted to spend his days drinking pina coladas out of coconuts and tanning in a hammock on the beach. Actually, that sounded pretty good. Maybe he’d join him.

Bruce chose that moment to moan loud enough for Tony to hear him through the glass. He was shivering even though a sheen of perspiration coated his face. He was sweating out the rest of the drugs. But his breath caught when Tony turned to him and he offered a slow smile.

“I didn’t believe you,” Bruce said. He let his eyes roam around the cage, and it was as if he was in the finest suite of The Plaza. He saw the pile of clothes last, and he sat up so he could drag them over and dress.

“I still did terrible things to you. You just were not entirely present through it all. I didn’t save you from a damn thing—not yet anyway.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re going somewhere else. Anywhere else. Where do you want to go?”

Bruce was still smiling, but his brain obviously hadn’t come entirely online yet because his eyebrows drew together at that question. He just stared at Tony, waiting for an explanation.

“Killian is leaving tonight on business,” Tony said. “So we’re going to take the opportunity to relocate.”

Bruce’s look of confusion turned to outrage. “Why would we do that?”

Tony threw his arms wide, as if he could encompass the world in a gesture. “Do you really want a list? Do I have to say it?”

“But we’re so close to solving Extremis! I really think we are, Stark!”

That shut Tony up for a second. He was prepared for an argument, just not that particular one. He decided to go for a different angle.

“Bruce. We can work on it from anywhere. All the files are on my server, and it’s fine, we can get to them anytime. Now, let yourself believe for one fucking second that maybe, just maybe you’ve suffered enough for the moment. Let’s take a vacation. I’ll build you a Hulk cage the size of Jurassic Park. You can help me design it! And if you still want to try to commit suicide by medical experimentation, we can do that, too.” By the end of his little speech, he had Bruce smiling again.

“Jurassic Park, huh?” Bruce asked shyly.

Tony had him. “Even better. I have a much better idea of what I’m getting into. It’ll be as if Skull Island had a yoga retreat.”

Bruce’s laugh was so sudden that it sent a thrill through Tony’s chest. He laughed long and hard enough that he had to catch his breath.

“Oh wow, I must still be stoned because that sounds perfect!” he said once he could talk again.

Tony grinned at him and opened his mouth to say something smart-ass in return, but the elevator opened and Killian stepped into the workshop. He stared distractedly at the phone in his right hand as he walked across the room.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

“I didn’t notice you were on the way down,” Tony said. He hadn’t heard the elevator ding, and by the look on Bruce’s face, neither had he.

“I overrode the alarm system,” Killian said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the phone. “You didn’t answer me. Where are you going?”

“What are you talking about?”

Killian turned his phone around then and tapped the screen. Tony saw himself and Bruce on a security feed. The video was from seconds before Killian arrived, when they were laughing together. Tony grabbed the phone out of Killian’s hand. From the angle of the screen, the camera he was using was towards the workstations.

“You do not have a camera in my workshop. You better not have a camera in my workshop!” Tony yelled as he stalked towards the back.

“I don’t have a camera here,” Killian said innocently.

Tony could tell which workstation the feed was coming from, but he tore apart the desk and the shelving next to it to no avail. After a few frustrating seconds, he waved his hand in front of the monitor’s built-in camera, and sure enough, the image of his hand flashed across the phone screen.

“Hahaha, using my own cameras against me. How very junior high.” Tony threw the phone as hard as he could as Killian’s head, but he caught it deftly.

“It’s not that hard,” Killian said. “You do it to me all the time.”

Tony backed up a step more and reached behind the desk to pull open the middle drawer. He had a spare wrist repulsor stashed in there. It wasn’t connected to a power source, so he would only be able to discharge it once, but at full force it had enough power to shatter bone, even at a distance. He slipped it onto his wrist and raised his hand, palm out at Killian.

“Stop, Aldrich. Get out of my workshop.”

Killian took a step towards him. “Now, we can both—“

He didn’t get a chance to finish because Tony fired the repulsor. The white hot blast exploded against the center of Killian’s chest, and the flash of dispelling energy blinded him for a second. When he could see again, he was staring at Killian, coming towards him with fury on his face.

Tony brought his hand up for a second blast, but there was no power left, and then Killian was there, wrapping one huge hand around Tony’s throat and shaking him so hard that he couldn’t see straight.

“I was trying to say that we can _both_ get what we want here. But no, you can’t even give me a chance to give you what you want.”

Tony couldn’t breathe and the lack of air was making it difficult to understand what Killian was saying. He clawed at Killian’s hand, but that only made his fist tighten. His vision started to turn grey and black just as Killian released him. He crumpled to the floor in a heap, concentrating on the feeling of air rushing in and out of his lungs. For a long moment, it hurt so much that it didn’t even feel like breathing, and he was afraid Killian had crushed his trachea.

“I’m not your enemy,” Tony wheezed. He clutched at his throat, though it did nothing to relieve the burn.

“You’ve certainly never been my friend,” Killian scoffed.

Tony grimaced, and not entirely from pain. “That’s not—untrue. We just weren’t part of the same scene. Until Extremis, you weren’t ever interested in the science side of the business. You were good at the other things.”

Killian puffed up a bit at that, so Tony followed that thread. “You didn’t see that conversation with Bruce? Where I told him all about how you run the business so I don’t have to? I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without you.”

Killian seemed like he was going to answer at first, but then he suddenly reached back and slapped Tony hard enough across the cheek that his mouth flooded with blood from a cut lip, and he spit it out onto the concrete.

“You think I’m so stupid.”

“Uh,” Tony said around the taste of blood. “I treat everyone like they’re stupid.”

That earned him another slap on the face, though he nearly ducked that one in time.

“But seriously, Aldrich, are you going to throw away damn near fifteen years of friendship over this?” Tony asked, throwing his arms wide in the general direction of the Hulk cage.

The snarl on Killian’s face lit his eyes like fire. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed to glow with a preternatural fury. The corners of his lips split like the earth at the base of a volcano, and red seams like lava spread along the blood vessels of his face.

For a brief second, Tony wondered exactly when he had been drugged because he must be hallucinating. But he still scrambled back and away on instinct, even if he didn’t entirely believe was he was seeing yet.

Tony connected back with reality very suddenly when Killian’s boot connected with his side and sent him sprawling. At first, his vision whited out and he couldn’t see or feel or hear a thing. Then he could hear the grind of broken bones right before his entire side exploded in pain. He lay still for a moment, but it wasn’t enough time to try to catch his breath before Killian was standing over him again, and he rolled his head to the side just as an Italian loafer rammed into the floor beside his neck.

Tony tried to use his momentum and keep rolling, but he didn’t have enough strength to get very far away. He barely managed to push himself up onto his elbows before Killian was on him again, pulling him upright by the hair, and he screamed in agony as splinters of bone shifted in his chest. Killian left him panting on his knees.

“You traded in my friendship a long time ago,” Killian said. “As soon as Maya came into the picture, you never had any time left for me.”

Tony took a deep breath to answer, but that was a mistake, and he doubled over coughing. The pain from coughing made his entire chest seize up, and he had to cough even harder. He brought up another mouthful of blood, and he wasn’t quite sure if it was from his lungs or some of the blood he swallowed earlier.

He glanced quickly at the cage. Bruce was standing up and watching intently while the collar flashed green and red in sequence. Nothing short of dropping a warhead on him was going to help Tony one bit.

“Maya was different,” Tony gasped. The pain of talking helped bring his attention back to Killian.

“She wasn’t any different than anyone else,” Killian said, shaking his head sadly. “You’re the one who’s different, Tony. Why don’t you see that? At first, Maya didn’t want to test Extremis on herself. She knew it wasn’t ready, but I fabricated data to convince her.”

“Why? We could have used her! Imagine how much faster this whole process would have gone with her still here!”

Killian shook his head. “Oh, Tony. You don’t see how much of a distraction she was for you. She had nothing left to give to the project. Maya had a good idea—a theory—but she knew the application was beyond her. She couldn’t do the math. But that’s where you come in, isn’t it? Yet, with Maya around, you lacked a certain…motivation.

“I thought we were on the same page after you came back from that cave. I thought you would finally see me as a partner, your equal…your friend. But, no. Not even saving your life could make the Great Tony Stark condescend to treat me with respect!”

Tony coughed and tried to push himself up. His feet skittered out from under him and he sprawled on the floor. Killian’s boot cracked across his jaw and he heard the crunch of bone fracturing. The force sent Tony tumbling backwards into a computer station, and the monitor fell off the back of the desk and cracked. Before he could recover, a grip like iron enclosed his neck again and he was lifted up. The pressure in his head made it feel like it was going to burst, and he couldn’t get any air.

“And after all the trouble I went through to have you kidnapped in the first place.”

Tony scrabbled at Killian’s hand with blunt nails, but Killian just laughed with a smile so bright it seemed to glow from within. He walked over to the cage, Tony dangling from his grip and fighting to breathe.

“Do you think, all this time, I’ve been improving only my most superficial qualities? No, Anthony, I’ve been expanding my mind, my psyche, my entire being! Your hard drive and your security systems can be hacked just like anyone else’s. You just think that I’m not smart enough to do it. But I am. I am now. I know what you and Banner have been up to. But I beat you to it.”

He opened the cage with one hand and tossed Tony inside. Bruce was right there to catch him, but he was quite a bit heavier than the lab rat and his weight took them both to the floor. Killian slammed the door shut.

Tony leapt to his feet to hit the override. There was no way he was going to let Killian beat him in his own workshop. But as he reached out, Killian opened his mouth and a pillar of flame engulfed the panel. Tony was too close, just touching it, as the superheated electronics exploded. He brought his arms up to shield his face and the searing sparks burned all across his arms and down his chest. He turned on instinct to protect his vitals, but the sparks continued to shower over his side and down his back.

“Stark! Tony!” he heard Banner yell, though the sound was faint in the loud rush in his ears.

Hands were on him, under his arms, pulling him back and away from the electrical fire, but the smell of burning flesh followed Tony down into the darkness.

****

Pain, everywhere, everything on fire. He could open his eyes, and Bruce’s face was in view above him. His eyes were quick, looking everywhere at once, but calm. Tony tried to talk, but it hurt too much. The acrid air burned his lungs as he wheezed in shallow breaths.

“Hey, hey,” Bruce said. He laid a cool hand against Tony’s cheek to keep his head still. It felt like the only place that wasn’t broken and burnt. “Shhh. Don’t talk. Just breathe.”

As Tony reached up, he could feel skin crack and pull away, but he managed to press his thumb against the silver collar around Bruce’s neck. It took a second for the scanner to read his thumbprint, and he glanced up, worried that the skin was too damaged for the print to register. But the lock clicked open, and it was a good thing because the sight of the charred skin hanging from his wrist made Tony pass out again.

****

It was dim and silent when Tony woke next. The fluorescent lighting was either out or off, leaving only the red-orange gleam of the safety lights. He was lying on a table, maybe, or a bench, but whatever it was hard. But he wasn’t in any pain. That realization made him almost scared to move, just in case he found that his injuries were even more severe than he imagined.

He swallowed and turned his head. Sitting on the floor against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, was Bruce. He looked like hell, even in the dim light. His face was rough with stubble, he was barefoot, and his clothes were torn and stained with dried blood.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. It’s the only way I thought I could save you, and even then…I thought…”

Tony sat up, the movement fluid and easy. He was fine. Just fine. The skin on his hands was whole and smooth, and there didn’t seem to be a mark on him anywhere. Even old, familiar scars were gone.

“What did you do?” Tony asked.

Bruce licked his lips. “Extremis,” he croaked.

“You—what?”

“I recoded it according to your formula and injected you.” He smiled shakily. “You didn’t blow up. How do you feel?”

Tony considered it. He felt…amazing. He stood up, and the movement was smooth, more fluid that it ever had been. He was naked, but hey, that wasn’t so bad either.

“Like a billion bucks?”

But, standing, he got a good look at the wreckage of the workshop. The overhead lights were shattered, and shards of glass still littered most of the floor. The salvageable electronics were all jury-rigged together into one big workstation, while the broken pieces were piled towards the back. Bruce had cleaned up some, but it looked like it wasn’t exactly a priority.

Then Tony’s eyes found the Hulk cage—or what was left of it. The glass was completely shattered, and the frame was misshapen and bent into an unrecognizable shape. Only the cot was left bolted to the floor.

The sharp clang of metal brought Tony’s attention back to Bruce. He was holding the Iron Man helmet in his hands.

“Oh, and Stark, I added a little something.”

Bruce tossed the helmet at him and, on reflexes he didn’t know he possessed, Tony reached out with his mind as naturally as he would reach out his hands to catch a ball. He felt the exact moment of connection, and his consciousness booted up into the hardware like an operating system. With a thought, he turned on the power, the HUD, and the tiny boosters. They spluttered on as the eyes lit up from within with a clear white light.

The helmet hovered at eye level, and Tony had the uncanny experience of seeing and being seen at the same time. He was looking at the helmet, but, on another level, he was looking back at himself through the helmet’s optical sensors.

His mind was directly interfacing with the suit.

He looked at Bruce out of the corner of his eye, looking back at him with a guarded expression. Then, he reached out with his new consciousness and felt the other pieces of armor, sensed them as if they were extensions of himself. He could sense the bots in the corner as their own separate yet networked entities, like seeing two birds of the same flock or two fish from the same school. And, he could see—yet seeing wasn’t even close to what he felt—the wide, interconnected web of data beyond like reading road maps in an atlas.

With a quick gesture—more because he was used to talking with his hands than because he needed to move them—he beckoned the rest of the armor to him. The pieces hovered in the air, then flew to him in sequence from the bottom up, encasing his feet, up his calves, his thighs, around his hips to connect to the solid chest piece with the arc reactor mounted inside. Last of all, the helmet turned itself around and fitted into place.

Looking through the HUD, Tony could see so much more than his eyes would allow. And, as he moved, the armor shifted and reformed around him like a second skin without any conscious commands on his part at all. Adjusting the flaps and tiny stabilizing boosters all along his legs and calves was as natural as a bird ruffling his feathers.

He could see Bruce in layers—visual readout swimming somewhere in between infrared and sonar. His brain should have been overloading from the sheer amount of information his processing cortex had to filter. But he felt fine.

Tony’s voice came out as an electronic rendering, but he still sounded awed when he asked, “How did you do this? You figured it out. Finished the math.”

Bruce shrugged sheepishly, and his body temperature rose a fraction of a degree. “I wasn’t sure it would work.”

Through the HUD, Tony could see Bruce much better than in the dim emergency lighting. He looked like he had been working nonstop, with dirt streaking everywhere except his hands, which were scrubbed clean. But he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.

“How long have we been down here?”

Bruce didn’t answer right away. He dragged a hand through his hair then went over to the sink to fill a glass with water. He returned and offered it to Tony. The metal fingers of the gauntlet closed around the glass with ease and it was second nature to adjust the power so he didn’t shatter the glass. He retracted the face plate and drained the water in one long swallow.

“Three days,” Bruce said at last. “It took three days for Extremis to work.”

“You’ve been taking care of me for three days?”

Bruce laughed. “I don’t exactly have anywhere else to go. Killian blew the elevator shaft and the emergency stairs. And by ‘blew’ I mean actual fire. Did you know he did that?”

“No. You think you know a person, but then one day, they open their mouth and you don’t know what comes out.”

Tony looked over at the closed elevator doors and wondered what wreckage they hid. He rolled his shoulders, delighted when the armor rolled right with him and he could feel the movement all the way down his back. “Well,” he thought aloud, “this doesn’t get us out of here. Even this suit can’t tunnel through a quarter-mile of desert bedrock.”

Bruce grinned.

****

Tony popped the hermetic seal on the helmet and pulled it off to see the wreckage with his own eyes. The sky was thick with acrid smoke that still curled lazily into the atmosphere. A few of the buildings still smoldered, but there was nothing left of the quinjet hangers but a pile of rebar and concrete.

The planes were gone, along with the munitions and most of the motor pool. What vehicles remained were gutted and burned.

Iron Works had been razed to the ground.

The breeze kicked up the sand and smoke into Tony’s eyes and he had to wipe away tears with a metal hand.

“I can’t imagine there’s anything left underground.”

Bruce’s voice made Tony jump. He had stepped off to…collect himself after transforming and tunneling through the earth to give them an escape route. Tony didn’t think he could ever forget the sight of his muscles straining, bulging, then ripping through his clothes as he grew and grew. And then the monster had taken one look at him in his metal armor and seemed to recognize him—to really see him—and understanding lit in those bright, savagely intelligent eyes. The Hulk reached up and stuck his fist into the ceiling, and then it had just been a matter of staying back as the giant cleared the way to the surface.

“No,” Tony replied. “I don’t know why he didn’t kill us.”

“He thought he did,” Bruce said simply. “Or you, at least.”

His shirt was gone and he was holding up the tatters of his pants with one hand. The other arm was thrown over his forehead to shield his eyes from the blinding sun. Even then, his eyes watered in the light, leaving clean streaks in the dirt and grit that covered his chest, his hair, even settled into his eyelashes. He sat heavily on a chunk of broken concrete. Tony looked at him askance.

“We have to stop him.”

Bruce nodded tiredly.

“You could have left me down there. Let me die.”

Now it was Bruce’s turn to give him a funny look sideways. “No, I couldn’t have,” he replied.

Tony sat down beside Bruce and the concrete shifted under the weight of the armor as it found a new balance. He put a metal arm across Bruce’s shoulders, which made him smile.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The closest safe house was in Flagstaff, a little cabin in canyon country that Tony hadn’t visited in years.  But the property was secure and, most importantly, it belonged strictly to Tony and had no ties whatsoever to AIM or Killian.

It was still too early in the year to snow this far south but the air was already sharp with cold before the sun had fully set.  The Lombardy poplars were streaks of gold through the landscape, and more than once, Tony saw deer in the trees on the side of the road as he drove the charred jeep down the highway.

Bruce had tried valiantly to stay awake, mesmerized as the landscape transformed first from black pine and scrub brush to ponderosas and juniper, then to the variegated colors of autumn as they reached higher elevations.  But he was utterly exhausted.  If Tony hadn’t already witnessed his capacity to withstand duress, he would have insisted they go to a hospital.  Then again, it would probably be an absolutely horrible idea to let any strange doctor look too closely at Bruce.  Or him, now.  Ok, so no unsecured hospitals, ever.

But as it were, Bruce merely slept in the seat next to him.  Between the two of them, they had managed to salvage one vehicle that definitely needed a new paintjob, but would pass without too much suspicion on public roadways.  Still, Tony had tried to keep to less used highways and service roads as much as he could.

He figured he owed Bruce the scenic route, even if he was currently slumped against the window frame.

They didn’t have clothes, or much money beyond what Tony had stashed in the workshop.  But it would get them to Flagstaff, so Tony drove straight through.  Anyway, the car ride soothed Tony’s frazzled new senses.  The jeep was too old to have anything other than a radio, and that was fried.  Almost on accident, he found that he could tune his auditory nerves into the radio channels like a receiver—which was a little annoying because who wants Mattress King commercials beamed into their brains?—but he could also turn it off almost as easily as a radio.

It was really fucking weird.  But it was also intriguing.  Tony figured that, if he tried, he could pick up satellite radio, too, but trying felt a little bit like standing on the edge of a cliff without knowing how far it is to the bottom.  And it was probably not something he should be attempting while operating a moving vehicle. 

They drove west so the sunset seemed to last a long time, but it was dark by the time they reached the cabin.  Tony reached through the open window and pressed his palm to the security panel, and the solid metal gate slid silently open. 

“Hey,” Tony nudged Bruce’s shoulder as he pulled up the dirt drive, but Bruce didn’t respond.

The garage door opened automatically as he drove up.  It clattered, and the sound echoed in the darkness, but Bruce still didn’t move, so Tony parked the car and let the garage door rattle shut.

“Bruce,” he said.  Nothing.  So he reached over and shook his shoulder.

Bruce came awake all at once, gasping so hard that it sounded like a scream turned the wrong way.  He cowered against the door of the car, as far away from Tony as he could, and brought his arms up over his face.

The movement was so sudden that Tony startled, too, and in a panic he reached back, opened the car door, and tumbled out backwards.  He was shaking enough that he had to use the hood of the car to steady himself on his feet, but he wasn’t shaking as much as Bruce was, still huddled in the passenger’s seat.

He didn’t quite know what to do with a Hulk in his garage, so he went around the front of the car so that Bruce could see him through the windshield, and around to the other side.  Slowly, giving Bruce enough warning to take his weight off the window, Tony opened the door.

“We’re in Flagstaff, Arizona.  It’s November something or other and it’s pretty cold outside.  We’re safe—well, as safe as we’re going to get in the immediate future.  Do you know who I am?”

As Tony spoke, the wild look in Bruce’s eyes calmed, and Tony could swear the color of his eyes darkened as he came back to himself.

“Everyone knows who you are,” Bruce said eventually.  “Flagstaff?” he repeated.

“Yup.”  Tony helped Bruce from the car by ducking under one of his arms.  Bruce let it happen, dazed and weak from days of battling to keep him alive, and then transforming in order to free them from what had intended to be their graves.  He needed food and rest before they could move again.

“We can stay here for as long as we need,” Tony said.  He opened the door to the house since Bruce’s other hand was keeping his pants together.  “It’s pretty much off the grid.  Solar powered electricity,” he said as he turned on the lights to the hallway.  “There’s a well fed by an underground spring.  Security systems, underground workshop, armory…I’ll give you a tour later but it’s pretty basic.”

Bruce snorted.  “Yeah.  What a shoebox,” he said softly.  But he stopped in his tracks when his bare feet touched the oak floorboards.  Tony could feel him start to shake again in his grasp.

“What?” Tony said.

He shook his head and just stood there for a long moment before he could take another step.

“It smells…like…my aunt’s house.”

Tony inhaled deeply.  Dust, mostly. Hardwood.  Cloth.  Paper.  Paint, if he used his imagination.  It smelled like a house.  How long had it been since Bruce had been in a house?

“Come inside.  There are clothes and hot water and food.” 

With a little more coaxing, Bruce allowed Tony to lead him inside, through the mud room with the washer and dryer, and into the dim living room.  The cabin really wasn’t much.  There was an open kitchen and a living room with bare rafters crossing overhead and a fireplace, and a bedroom and bathroom to the side.  The bedroom closet did have a secret door that led down to the workshop and the armory, but even those facilities were more hobby space than anything else.

The furniture was covered in dingy sheets.  Tony folded one off the couch and pushed Bruce down onto the plush corduroy.  He folded a little in on himself, but he still looked better sitting down than he did wavering on his feet and trying to hold up the last shreds of his pants. 

“You looked absolutely fucked,” Tony said.  He smirked a little.  “Not in a fun way, either.”

Bruce nodded.  “Sounds about right.”

“Hot shower, food, sleep.  In that order?”

With a monumental effort, the other man raised his gaze and held it steady, but he didn’t answer aloud.  The despair and defeat in his eyes was so dark, and it threatened to spread, outward and inward, Tony could see it.  Bruce was absolutely terrified.  His entire world had been ripped away from him—not for the first time, but he bet that Bruce hadn’t expected it to happen again.  Sure, it wasn’t the best life, but it had been predictable, up to a point, and safe in its own way.  But now Bruce was an unmoored boat, floating on the sea farther and farther from shore. 

He knew what it felt like, so maybe that’s why he could recognize it so quickly in the lab rat, he thought.  But he was going to lose Bruce if he didn’t play his cards right.  So he stood and took Bruce’s hand to pull him to his feet.

Because if he lost Bruce, Tony had no clue what he was going to do.

“Come on,” Tony said.  “Get up.  I know you’re tired, but don’t go catatonic on me now.  I’m not going to carry you.”

Again, Bruce allowed himself to be led, this time through the bedroom and into the bathroom.  He kept his eyes firmly on his feet, which wasn’t hard because he was hunched over nearly double with exhaustion, but when Tony let him go so he could start up the shower, Bruce leaned on the sink and looked up into the mirror.

He froze, transfixed by his reflection.  Tony saw it out of the corner of his eye, and swiveled around to see Bruce leaning in towards the mirror, staring intently.  He did nothing for a few slow seconds, but then he reached up to touch a patch of grey hair peppering the brown at his temple.  The hand traveled down, tracing the contour of barely-visible lines around the corner of his eyes, and ending to rub through the stubble on his face that was coming pretty close to a beard. 

“How long has it been?” Tony asked softly.

Bruce glanced at him and, spell broken, turned away from the mirror.  “I couldn’t really tell you.  Ten years, at least.  Even before I was caught, I wasn’t staying in places with a lot of mirrors.”

“Is it a shock?”

“Yeah.” He sounded sad, but it could be the exhaustion talking.  “I haven’t really changed at all.”

****

Tony left Bruce to shower in private, though Bruce had watched him nervously as he shut the door.  But it allowed Tony a few minutes to start up the heater and air filtration system and get rid of some of the dust and stale air, and to make sure the water cisterns were full.  Then he stood outside for a minute to gaze up into the sky, as if he could _see_ an AIM satellite if it was overhead.

Which he couldn’t.  So he went back in.

The kitchen was stocked with canned food, pastas, jars of sauces, and some strange packets that claimed to be dinner if you “just add water.”  In the end, Tony poured some cans of chicken noodle soup into a pot and added a can of mixed vegetables to add some color and set it to heat on the stove. 

Tony returned to the bedroom just as the sound of the shower cut out.  He rummaged through the cedar drawers, using his hands to find something soft and warm instead of looking for anything in particular.  His fingers closed around a plaid flannel shirt and matching bottoms.  Perfect.  They were wrinkled, but it was better than anything Bruce had.

“Bruce?” Tony called through the closed door.  “Clothes.”

The door immediately cracked open, and steam billowed out of room, swampy and warm in contrast to the colder, sharper air in the rest of the cabin.  Bruce saw it was him, and opened the door wide.  He had a towel tied around his waist, and little streams of water still ran down his chest, but he looked a lot better with the concrete and dirt washed off.  His eyes were a little clearer and more focused, though his skin was dimpling in the cold.

Tony helped him thread his limbs into the pajamas then led him back to the couch.  The soup was warm enough, so Tony split it into two bowls and set one on Bruce’s lap.  He automatically began to eat, and even though Tony knew he was hungry, he didn’t seem to take any kind of enjoyment out of it.  The soup tasted like heat and salt, and the vegetables were little squares of bland mush, but it was filling and made it easier to think. 

Beyond a murmured “thank you,” Bruce didn’t say a word throughout their meal.

“Bed,” Tony insisted when Bruce hadn’t touched his bowl for a few long minutes. 

That made Bruce look up and around the cabin with wide, thoughtful eyes.  “I don’t know if I can sleep in a bed,” he said.

“Good because there’s only one and it’s mine,” Tony said.

That made Bruce smile a little bit.  Clean and fed, he was regaining his humor.  But he was already half asleep by the time Tony dragged a blanket from the bedroom into the living room.  So he woke Bruce just enough to make sure he was aware that he was safe before he lifted his feet onto the couch and laid the blanket over him.

“Please be here when I wake up,” Tony whispered.

He thought Bruce was asleep, so he was surprised to hear him say, “Where else would I be?”

Tony left Bruce huddled on the couch in the dark living room.  He needed a shower, too, and fresh clothes.  As soon as he entered the bathroom, he threw a towel over the mirror.  Though he had already seen himself through the Iron Man helmet, seeing his reflection in the mirror with human eyes was too intimate of an experience for him right now.

The hot water washed away layers of dirt and sweat and blood that were embedded in Tony’s skin, though it felt like no amount of scrubbing could get rid of the grime.  But, eventually, the hot water began to run out, so he begrudgingly turned off the stream.  He dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans that hung loose on his hips.  He had lost weight since he’d last been here.

The bedroom door stood open so Tony peeked through but it was too dark to see anything other than a lumpy blanket on the couch.  Just a dull grey blob.  But everything seemed fine enough.

The sheets on the bed needed changing, and by the time he was done with that, he was tired enough to turn off the lights, lie down and close his eyes.  Sleep came easily, even after three comatose days.  But it was quiet out here in a strange way that Tony hadn’t experienced before.

He could hear the nearly-silent of scuttle of a lizard on the tile and the wind in the cracks of the house.  The laboratory could be quiet, too, when there was nothing but the white noise of machinery on stand-by.  

But this sense of quiet was unnerving.  He listened intently for any sound from the room beyond.  A shuffle of blanket, a thump of the couch cushion on the floor, the rustle of Bruce turning over.  But there was nothing.

And it was cold.  There was a quilt on the bed, and Tony rolled himself up like a burrito, but it was impossible to get warm.  The heater ran on the same solar power as the rest of the house, but he had to prime the furnace, at least.

But the cold didn’t keep Tony awake.  He his mind raced with implications and possibilities of Extremis, of Aldrich, of AIM…and a lot of Bruce, too.  He knew he had to cut ties completely with Killian, and he began to try to remember exactly which subsidiaries were funded by whom.  As soon as he thought it, a notated list appeared in his head as if he could read it from a computer spreadsheet.  It took a second to adjust, but as far as he could tell, he had enough money to disappear off the face of the planet with a small entourage.

Running numbers in his head was more effective than any lullaby, and Tony soon fell asleep.

****

The ambient temperature of the room had dropped 17.8 degrees by the time Tony woke.  It was still dark, though the stars and moon shining through the windows told him that he wasn’t underground.  But it was cold, and the cotton quilt felt like tissue paper. 

The extra blankets were in the big cedar closet in the living room. 

To Tony’s surprise, the door to the cabin was cracked open, which was the cause of the frigid gust that cut through the house.  A cursory glance around the room found that, yup, Bruce was gone.  The sofa still had the raggedy little pillow, but the comforter and the clothes and boots he had laid out for Bruce were all gone.

More in reflex from the cold than frustration, Tony kicked the door shut.  He should take inventory, he thought miserably as he leaned against the kitchen counter.  Just to make sure nothing too explosive or expensive was taken.  But Tony found that he didn’t really care.  If Bruce found keys to a car, he was welcome to it, and he was going to need all clothes and cash and food he could get.  Tony just felt little empty, and that he should probably go back to bed.  He always knew it would come to this.

The oak door was levered open by a wide shoulder, since the person’s arms seemed to be occupied.  Tony just stood aside as Bruce tottered in with an armful of firewood.  There were only a few split logs, and the rest were drybrush.  He dumped the whole load on the bricks next to the fireplace and dusted sap and pine needles from his clothes.  After a long minute, he looked up at Tony.

“It’s cold,” he said simply.

Tony nodded once, then set about making hot drinks while Bruce built a fire.  He checked to make sure the flume was clear before lighting the kindling and fanning the fire to life.  By the time he was done, Tony had a couple mugs of bitter tea in his hands. 

When Tony rounded the couch, he saw that Bruce had pulled the blankets and pillows down to the floor to sleep on the cold hearth.  But now, he sat with his arms pulled around his folded knees, staring into the beginning of the fire.

“You should sleep,” Tony said as he handed over a mug.  Bruce took it and used it to warm the chill from his hands.

“Probably shouldn’t,” he said.  “How about you?  You still have a lot of healing to do.”

“Fit as an electric fiddle.” Tony said, puffing out his chest a bit. 

By the look of it, Bruce hadn’t been kidding when he said he hadn’t slept.  His red eyes were ringed in black and purple bruises, and he shivered constantly, even as the fire’s intensity grew. 

“You don’t look good, Bruce.  
Bruce shot him a watery smile.  “You should’ve seen yourself a few days ago.”

Tony nodded, but he looked around the little cubby near the fireplace Bruce had claimed for his own.  There was a bottle of water on the table nearby, fresh and still cold.  The couch was covered in neutral-blue sheets, turned down with a huge down pillow.  IT must have been so strange and alien to Bruce that it made it heat ache.

“Get up.” Tony urged Bruce before he even voiced his plan.  “Keep the fire going.”

Bruce obeyed, barely having time to grab the blanket which was quickly becoming his favorite.

Tony certainly was glad that he had a cleaning service come once a week to all his properties—just in case—so the wood floor was mostly dust-free.  He stripped the couch and laid the sheets on the floor in front of the fire place.  He did have t the couch back so that it almost touched the far wall, but he didn’t use that wall anyway.

Tony was so tired that he didn’t even care how graceful he looked flopping over the back of the couch.  It was still warm and soft from where Bruce had laid down.

The lab rabbit in question was still standing, still staring the fire. 

“Brucie,” Tony called out to him.  “You need to sleep!”

That seemed to knock Bruce out of some sort of daze.  “Righ, right, yes.  I was just thinking…”

Tony looked up.  “…do you have a spare toothbrush?”

Even after brushing his teeth and running cool water over his face, Bruce didn’t look any more comfortable.  He laid down stiffly on his bedroll in front of the fire, turned his back on Tony and resolutely tried to pretend to sleep. 

The fire and the company (even if he was a complete faker) was much better than the cold bedroom.  Still Bruce’s utter stillness was unnerving.

“Why can’t you sleep, Bruce,” Tony said at last.

“I’ll be quiet, I’m sorry.”

Tony threw one of his few, precious pillows at him, which was immediately assimilated into his own bedding.

“My circadian rhythm is screwed,” he admitted.  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep.”

Long months of never-ceasing overhead lighting, no windows, no indications of seasons or days, no sun or moon or stars.  And then he must have lost huge tracks of time while he was drugged.

And the drugs themselves were probably giving him some sort of withdrawal symptoms that he wasn’t even mentioning.  Tony had experimented in college, and long-time use of some of thos drugs can’t just be walked away from.

“We should have thought to bring the tranqs.” Tony said.

“No, then what would happen if I were drugged and we were attacked?  Back to square one?”

Tony made a face.  “I have a better idea.  Lay down on your stomach on the floor, right there where the fire is warm.”

Bruce obeyed, and Tony laid down full length on the couch so he could dangle his right hand down. They lay parallel one on the couch, the other on the floor, the fire radiating heat across them both.   

Tony let his hand trail across Bruce’s skin.  H went up and down his arms, across the nape of his neck, and traced every bumps down his side.  Bruce was pliant, far more water than solid in the state he was in. 

A log in the fire cracked and broke up, spewing red and yellow sparks that died out before they could hurt anyone. 

“This feels really good,” Bruce admitted after a few lone minutes.  “But I still don’t think I can fall asleep.”

Ten minutes later. Bruce was snoozing on the warm hearthstones.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! the story looks like it's supposed to AND A new chapter! Here it is! Only one more left!

Bruce slept through the night on the warm stone floor, with hardly a blanket beneath him. The fire comforted him, Tony thought. The primal, elemental existence of the flame must bring him some solace, maybe a reminder that he was a little closer to the natural world.

He woke in the grey hours of the dawn, drawing his bare feet a little further into the folds of the quilt Tony had tossed over him. His eyes blinked open, but as soon as he saw Tony, he was asleep again. Apparently he had found what he had been looking for.

The air cooled when the fire died down, and Tony threw a few more of the pieces of dry wood that Bruce had brought in. But the cold wasn’t what had woken him--he was hungry.

Tinned soup, tinned vegetables, tinned tuna, dry pasta. Tony dumped a can of Spaghetti-O’s into a bowl and threw it in the microwave. Then, he closed the door…and reached out with his mind to turn on the microwave as easily as with a touch of a finger. Actually, it was a lot easier because he could set time, power level, and turn it on with one concise thought instead of a string of unnecessary gestures. The thought that he would never burn popcorn again was surprisingly elating.

Tony brought his bowl of Spaghetti-O’s to the couch. He shoveled it into this mouth with automatic movements, and it was good that it was too hot to taste at first because it was pretty vile. A shift in the blankets at his feet reminded him of Banner.

“Hey, Bruce, want some disgusting pasta from a can?”

Bruce was too exhausted. He huffed a “later” and turned back to face the fire.

Still, when Tony rinses out his bowl, he left a bottle of water on the floor near Bruce’s hand.

Tony went outside by way of the garage and left the door open. The front veranda was landscaped in white and rose quartz beds, and even though the air was crisp and cold, the full sun reflected off the white stone and the concrete driveway into Tony’s eyes. He made his way around the house, conducting a more thorough security check now that he had daylight.

He had forgotten how isolated it could be out here. That was one of the reasons he chose this place—somewhere to get the fuck away from all of the demands of the world. The interviews, news reports, television appearances, magazine covers, smart-ass radio jockeys, and voyeuristic reporters. All those parasitic ticks he had to shake after that cave in the other desert that was so unlike this one.

Tony looked back at the low cabin. Bruce was going to sleep the day away, if he knew what was good for him. And even if he did wake, Tony had no doubt he wouldn’t leave the cabin.

He closed his eyes, and reached out with his mind. The armor, slid under and between the old AIM jeep’s seats, rattled eagerly awake.  

“Come to papa,” Tony said, low under his breath even though he didn’t need to.

The prehensile armor came to life and shot out of the open garage door like a litter of eager puppies. It climbed up him from feet to helmet, interlocking and adjusting itself as he moved. There was a moment of deep, thrilling claustrophobic dark before the HUD sparked to life and he could see everything in 360 degree living color, feel the sonar and radar sensors through the vibrations of his bones, hear the electronic chatter of airliners flying thousands of meters in the air.

The suit increased the concentration of oxygen in the air filters as Tony’s breath shortened. It was a lot to take in all at once, but he hoped it would be enough. He was going to find out.

He locked his hands down by his sides and fired the thrusters. The gravitational force dragged his stomach down to his feet, but he knew it wasn’t enough to make him pass out. Still, he evened out so he wasn’t fighting gravity as much as curving in an arc, slow and easy and so far above the desert floor.

He was flying. He didn’t know how he was doing it because it wasn’t a cognitive process as much as it was instinctual. He could feel when the air was thin and the engines were having trouble, and the sudden burst of power when he dropped down and met a pocket of rising oxygen.

He careened around orange sandstone cliffs and boulders, just above the level of the poplars. His HUD picked up a water source and he followed a little stream as it widened into a creek that ran into a narrowing gorge. The rock wall threw strange shadows over the water and sonar sounded downright ghostly when the walls of the caverns curled over him. He flew over the water until the walls became too tight, then with a twist of his hips, shot straight up out of the gorge into cloudless sky.

The day was clear and blue as the sea, and Tony was disappointed because he wanted to know what it was like to fly through a cloud. Was it like chewing cotton candy sticky with chemical residue, or more like breathing in the cold fog of a San Francisco morning? He paused at the zenith of a climb and looked far and wide across the desert Southwest. The curve of the earth didn’t look too far away, and Tony wondered, for a second, how long it would be before he made it around the world. But, for now, it was low pines and dark, twisting canyons, and snow on the higher peaks a little north. Turning away from the sun, he could see the lush, verdant swath of the Colorado River as it ran towards the Grand Canyon.

Tony gunned it, got a few miles away, then pulled up. Flying to the Grand Canyon would definitely cross into someone else’s air space. And he knew that the first organization anyone would report a UFO to would be AIM.

****

Bruce still slept, but the fire was down to embers and the cabin was dark inside. Tony felt unnaturally loud as he clanked the armor off and set the pieces on the kitchen table. He came around the couch and saw that there was a new pile of wood in the rack and the bottle of water was mostly empty. But Bruce still slept.

After putting more wood on the fire, Tony made another dinner of canned soup over a fascinating conversation with the microwave and ate alone.

****

Bruce didn’t wake up all the way until the next afternoon. Tony wasn’t present when Bruce woke up, but the security cameras let him know what was going on.

He groaned and sat up slowly, moving first to his hands and knees with the blanket over his back like a turtle shell, then levering himself up to his feet.   He looked around, seemed to know where he was, and looked down to study the print of his pajamas for a good minute or two. Then he disappeared into the bathroom.

While Bruce was waking up, Tony was perched on the top scaffolding of a Verizon tower. It was one of those towers that tried to look like a pine tree, so it had a pretty good place to sit where the green metal pole “branches” were connected at solid angles, while he used the internet connection.

So far, he had been able to infiltrate AIM’s network, though he hadn’t been able to get as far as breaking into Killian’s private accounts. But AIM’s general security was no trouble, and Tony could get into just about every AIM employee’s email. So he did. He hacked into dozens of accounts at the same time, with the same ease as a seasoned blackjack dealer riffling through a stack of cards in his hands. He intercepted every email between Killian and his think tank of scientists, and with that information he could put together a pretty good picture of Killian’s plans.

But as soon as he was alerted by the cabin’s security cameras that Bruce was awake, he shut down all the open connections, flipped down his visor, and rocketed back to the house.

****

“Hey Brucie, I’m home!” Tony called as he entered the cabin.

Bruce crept warily out of the bedroom. Despite his kicked-dog expression, he looked much better than the last time he had woken up. The shadows under his eyes were still there, but they were lighter, and he seemed to have a little more energy.

“You look like you slept ok,” Tony said.

Bruce nodded and smiled with hesitant, nervous energy. He gaze glanced around the room quickly before settling on some middle distance near Tony’s feet, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot. He had no idea what to do with himself, Tony realized.

Tony also realized that he was standing right in Bruce’s way, between the bedroom doorway and the rest of the living room. He took a step aside and let Bruce see that he could pass, but he still didn’t move. Tony thought for a second about telling him to go sit down. He was absolutely sure that was what Bruce was waiting for. But he wasn’t going to play that game. The idea of ordering Bruce around made Tony feel faintly sick.

So he sighed dramatically, turned around and plopped down on the couch. He very pointedly did not look at Bruce, as if he couldn’t care less what the fuck Bruce did.

And Bruce slowly made his way across the living room and lowered himself down into folds of the blanket on the floor. The fire was out, but furnace was running so they didn’t need it for warmth. Still, Bruce looked forlorn as he stared into the ash.

Bruce had to be famished, but there were no signs around the kitchen that anything had been consumed or even disturbed. Then again, as Tony’s eyes took quick stock of the supplies, he felt his stomach rebel at the idea of another meal from a tin can. If they were going to stay here any longer, then were going to have to pick up some food anyway.

“Let’s go to Denny’s!” Tony announced as though it was the greatest plan of all plans.

Bruce looked himself up and down, as if to judge if he were looking normal enough to be seen in public, which was pushing it in the blue plaid flannels he was wearing. And Tony still hadn’t found anything for his feet beyond the over-sized snow boots he left by the door for an emergency.

“I can’t,” Bruce said in a small voice. “Not like this.”

Tony snorted. “No, not like that. Get in the shower again—yes, I know you’re clean enough but it settles your nerves—and I’ll round up some proper diner clothes.”

Bruce didn’t resist as he was trundled off to the bathroom again. Tony did take some time to choose an appropriate outfit—loose jeans, black shirt, dark sports coat. He would be able to blend in any major city in America. There was an entire dresser full of boxers and thermal layers and socks, so it didn’t look like they were going to have to shop for Bruce.

By the time Tony had the clothes laid out on the bed, Bruce was done again. He ducked out of the steamy room with nothing but a damp white towel wound around his waist, but it was the small, sheepish smile that crept across his face that distracted Tony the most.

Tony dressed him, more to make sure the lapels folded in the right way and that the jeans weren’t rolled up past the cool line into dork territory.

He turned Bruce around to face him, hands on his shoulders to keep them square and steady. “You’re going to be ok,” Tony said.

He spun on his heel and started walking to the garage. He could hear Bruce mumbling to himself as he slid into the passenger seat, but his smile was answered so he dropped it.

They found Denny’s first, which was awesome because Tony was starving and he knew better than to go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. Bruce was amused by the 10-foot yellow and orange sign out front. And he stared until Tony touched his arm and beckoned him inside.

The interior decoration must have been different because Bruce took it all in with wide eyes, without a comment. He hung back when Tony approached the receptionist, apparently entranced by the historical photos of downtown Flagstaff mounted on the walls. He motioned over to Bruce that there was a table ready, and the other man was on his feet and by his side in one, fluid movement.

“Where do you want to sit, gentlemen?” the waitress asked.

“Here’s good,” Tony said suddenly because he could see the car through the open window.

They sat, Bruce nervously glancing at Tony’s face every half a second, but Tony ignored him and flipped through the pages of skillet fried, oven fried, chicken fried, and then just plain fried items he could have. The waitress returned and asked for their drinks—water for Bruce and orange juice for Tony because seven thirty in the morning was too soon to have the Vodka out.

Breakfast was going pretty well. Bruce made eye contact when he absolutely had to, and his voice had been on the edge of an easy smile all morning as they bantered.   When he thought no one was looking, he slipped packets of honey and sugar into his pockets.

Tony had been so worried that he would lose Bruce. He could have in a million different ways. He could have never gotten to know him beyond another specimen for science experiment. He could have never gotten to see him do yoga, or meditate, or solve Extremis with a whiteboard marker.

The return of the waitress interrupted the downward spiral of Tony’s internal monologue.   She had her pen and pad out, and she was ready to take their orders.

She asked them if they had decided, and Tony rattled off his order with bored ease. She turned to Bruce, who looked up at her with a controlled, blank expression.

“It’s ok to be shy, sweetie. You can even point to it if you don’t want to say anything.”

Bruce scanned the room once with his eyes only, without turning his head or making any sort of outward gesture. Then, with more speed and agility than Tony had seen him display before, Bruce stood, slid his way past the waitress and ran out the front door, murmuring apologies the entire time.

He didn’t go far. From his vantage in the corner of the booth towards the back, Tony could see Bruce slam his way out the front entrance. He looked right, then left, probably at the same ugly expanse of dirt in either direction, and stomped over to the car and sat on the curb in the shade of the hood.

The waitress was still looking out the door, but she turned to him expectantly.

“He’s done a few tours,” Tony explained as the lie tumbled from his lips far too easily. “Just got back, taking him to his family.”

“Yeah?” The waitress got real friendly. Tony must have hit a personal note. “Well you better tell his family that he isn’t every going to be the same, but that’s not bad.”

Tony felt uncomfortable for a first time in a long time. “I don’t think he’s got much family but me right now.”

She sighed with relief. “You know, that may be more of a blessing than it seems at first.”

In the end, Deeanna, the waitress, sent Tony out with to-go cups of coffee and two bags of breakfast food that would keep ok in the late morning heat. Bruce, covered in the scent of motor oil and gas fumes from sitting on the stubby concrete parking barrier, looked far too much like a lost, stray dog looking to hitch a ride. The Armani coat didn’t even do anything for him.

He held his head in his hands and pulled the collar of the coat high over his ears and face so only a short mop of unmistakable greying curls visible. Bruce looked like he was trying to create a nice little cave to go die in.

“Come on,” Tony kicked Bruce’s foot as he walked past. “Let’s eat, but not on the asphalt.”

Bruce came out of his jacket-cocoon with slow movement. He watched as Tony searched though the trunk for a blanket and came up another grey wool fire blanket.

Off to the side of the restaurant, there was a little wooded strip that separated it from the main road. It wasn’t much—maybe 10 or 20 feet across, but there was grass and a huge red pine trees created a dense shade. There, Tony set down the paper cups and Styrofoam containers and laid out the dull wool blanket.

Bruce had waited by the car the entire time, and Tony had a brief flash back to the night of the meteor shower, and having to cajole him into leaving the car.

“Don’t worry about what happened in the diner,” Tony said. “It’s a fucking Denny’s. No one cares what you do. In Taylor’s words, you gotta shake it off!”

“I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with his work,” Bruce murmured.

Tony looked at him askance to see if he was being serious, but Bruce was concentrating on the cracks in the pavement.

“Ok, here’s the abstract: the people in life who judge you don’t matter. And the people who do matter in your life shouldn’t be judging you.”

“My first time…out…in forever and I fucked it up” Bruce murmured to himself.

Tony shoved a paper cup of coffee into his hands and box of pancakes. “Fucked what up? We came to get food and coffee. Here it is.” Tony plopped down on the blanket and shoveled pancakes with far too sweet icing into his mouth.

Bruce looked forlornly at the coffee and set it next to Tony as he sat down. “I don’t think you want me drinking that.”

Tony shrugged, downed the rest of his own coffee and started on Bruce’s.

They ate in silence for a while, both of them too famished to do much more than eat. Bruce seemed to finish first—he didn’t eat much either so that may have been why. But he just settled back on his elbows and looked up through the pine needles at the impossibly blue sky.

“How’s the flying?” Bruce asked eventually. “I assumed that’s what you’re doing when I wake and you’re not at home."

“That’s a good bet,” Tony said. “Yeah. Flying. Bruce, it’s exactly what I thought it would be but like a hundred times more bad ass.   And it feels so natural. Like I was born for it.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Technically, you were engineered and reborn for it.”

A true smile stretched across Tony’s face. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Finally someone who gets it.”

But Tony’s face fell as he remembered what he needed to tell Bruce. The stress of leaving the cabin, ordering food at the restaurant, and now hiding by the car had taken a toll on Bruce, and on Tony’s focus.

“Bruce,” Tony started again, his voice pitched lower, more serious. “I can travel the internet like…like driving a car down a city street. And I can get into just about every program and device and database on that street.”

“Anything connected to the internet? Does it have to have a wireless connection?”

Tony’s eyes rounded and grew brighter. “No not the device itself, it just takes me longer because I have to find a way to connect into the mainframe. But I haven’t found an agency yet that doesn’t have some kind of Wi-Fi so I can get my foot in the door.

“I still have to hack into the systems, which is joke by the way when I can subconsciously recode, but unless it’s highly encrypted on a totally closed system, I can get to it within seconds.”

“Oh, god, I just armed Tony Stark with unlimited access to the Internet and the tools to take down the infrastructure of our entire…world!”

“Relax, rab labbit. I just want to drink scotch and blow shit up. I’m not interested in becoming King of some virtual world. Hell, I’m already King of this one.”

A true smile like up Bruce’s face. “It worked! It really worked just like it was supposed to! So what have you found out about Killian? What are you going to do next?”

The Styrofoam boxes were empty, so Tony took them and threw them in the nearest bin.

“Vegas,” Tony said. He expected Bruce to roll his eyes and say something along the lines of “this is not the time.”

But Bruce blinked at him, looked him earnestly in the eye, and said, “This is going to be bad. Hulk can’t be anywhere around people—civilians. Does he have a target?”

Tony shook his head slowly. “It’s going to be New Year’s Eve. The target is everyone. It doesn’t even matter if he has a target. If that bomb goes off, you know there will be dignitaries and celebrities, and international guests. Just so many people. And so many terrorist groups could claim responsibility—but he’s going to make sure each and every scrap of metal is laser engraved with Stark Industries so there will be no mistake.”

“Not AIM?”

Tony shook his head. “If he did that, he’d implicate himself. But now Stark Industries was my parent’s companies, and the bombs are based on my designs, so I don’t see how I’m going to get out of this with my skin intact.”

“How long, Tony?” Bruce breathed. He hadn’t been paying attention to the days nearly as closely as Tony originally thought.

“Three days,” Tony breathed. He looked up to Bruce again. “I can’t find the bomb’s position. Either Killian is keeping it deep under wraps, or else they’re not putting it online. What is it on a frickin’ Post-It on the fridge or something?... “ Tony was babbling.

“What kind of bomb,” Bruce asked, and there was an edge to his voice. “What’s the power source? Knowing Killian, it’s not going to be fertilizer.”

Tony’s lips were so dry he had to lick them before he answered. “Gamma,” he said softly. “He’s been looking a lot into gamma since we got you.”

“Oh shit!” Bruce swore softly. Then, after a moment, he began laughing, almost giggling, uncontrollably.   “I’ll take care of the bomb. You keep Killian out of the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for being encouraging and patient (as you always are)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when I deleted the story, it also deleted the chapter I saved in draft form...which I didn't back up because, like Tony**, I'm apparently too cool for that. And I've never had to rewrite my own writing so that was not a fun experience. Enough excuses! Thank you, dear reader, for you patience!
> 
> **see Stark Unassembled, where Tony neglects to back up his brain and ends up in a coma

“This is your gun closet?” Bruce asked in amazement as he scuttled down the metal ladder after Tony.

The underground workshop was dim, lit only by the emergency lighting, but the air was much cooler and fresher than the rest of the cabin due to the much more efficient air filtration.  The room was maybe twice the size of the cabin above, though the helicopter on its rising landing pad took up at least half the space.

“I can’t even fit a particle accelerator down here,” Tony complained as he walked towards the far wall and pressed his palm to the wall.  The airlock hissed open as the wall opened up adamantium closets of weapons.  He gestured to the impressive array.

“See anything you like?”

Bruce’s eyes were wide, but his hands were clasped firmly behind his back as he approached the racks.  “Heat rays? Laser rifles?  What do those canisters even have in them?”  But his voice was teasing as he took each weapon from the rack and placed it gently back.  He got to another gun that was heavier than it looked and sported an inverted dish at the end of the muzzle.  “So we meet again,” he said to the weapon with one eyebrow raised.  “Though I remember you were much bigger last time.”  He placed it back.  “Then again, I suppose I was, too.”

He smiled a little at Tony’s confused expression.  “Sonic ray, right?  That’s what the Army used on me…” he made a face “er…the Other Guy the last time they caught us.”

Tony could feel the blood drain from his face.  “My weapons?  They used my weapons to catch you?”

Now it was Bruce’s turn to look confused.  “Your designs are pretty distinctive.  I don’t think the military stole them.  And it did have AIM stamped down the side in pretty big letters.”

“This whole time—“ Tony started to say, but Bruce cut him off.

“If you’re going to stop Killian, you’re going to need to find him first.  His heat signature is off the chart, even when he’s not all fired up, as the case may be.  What do you have that isn’t going to melt?”

“What do you use to fight a dragon?” Tony grumbled as he looked over his stores.

“Shields.  Thick ones.  And armor.  Lances.  Swords.  Bard used a bow.”

Tony snorted.  “Yeah.  Let’s bring a fucking bow and arrow to a firefight.”

In the end, they had the sonic cannons, lasers, and stun guns they could use.  Stray bullets, Bruce pointed out, would cause more damage than they were worth.  The rest of the day was spent dismantling the armor piece by piece and integrating as much of the weaponry as they could.

Tony shoved a half-bent sonic cannon over to the side.  The weight was just too much.  He could mount one, over the shoulder, with a pop-up laser minigun on the other side to even it out.  But the prehensile armor would never be able to take the weight that a heavier suit could.  Already, he had a half a dozen redesigns filed away in a memory folder, but he didn’t have the fabrication equipment in his hideaway to make anything new in the timeframe they had.

Tony stretched and cracked his back and looked around for Bruce.  He had been so involved in his part of the project that he hadn’t kept track of him at all.

But Bruce was just wandering around the lab, placing a small assortment of tools into a leather bag.

“How are you going to disarm this bomb?”

The workshop was very quiet and Bruce jumped a mile.  A pair of pliers tumbled from his hands to clatter on the concrete floor.  He bent over slowly to pick them up and put them in the bag with the others.

“I don’t think I can answer that before I see it,” Bruce said.  “If we’re very very lucky, then he really did just use my designs and it’ll look familiar.  And, hopefully, Killian is a million miles away from the blast site, racking up alibis in Beijing or something and he won’t know we did anything until it’s too late.”

Tony knew better.  Killian was going to want a front-row seat to his show.  He’d want to be one of the first responders, with his shiny new quinjets ready to help search the rubble for the people he put there and his jacked-up super-soldier smile plastered across every news network.

“We’re going to Vegas, labbit.  Don’t count on luck.”

Bruce nodded and stepped over to admire the bulkier armor.  “It looks like it can give as good as it can take now,” he said.

“I hope so,” Tony said.

*****

They took Tony’s little two-seater helicopter west, towards Las Vegas.  Bruce’s hair flew wildly around his face in the rotor wash, though the headset helped keep most of it in place.  He had his little leather bag of tools at his hip and a computer open on his lap. 

“Tony, I need you to access all the spectrometers in the city and calibrate them for gamma radiation.   Then you can feed all that data to this computer and I’ll run it through the algorithm to triangulate the source.”

“Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” Tony muttered.  They were flying through nothing but clear blue sky, so he flipped the controls to autopilot and tried to concentrate.

The task wasn’t very difficult.  It was easy to identify laboratories and universities as hubs of brilliant multi-faceted light on the web.  Then it was just a matter of finding the right devices to switch on and tune to his specifications.  Not much different than the microwave, really.

Sending all the data to the computer was a bit tricker.  Too much at one time, and he’d fry the circuits.  So the data started loading, in starts and fits until Tony could find the right flow.

“Holy bovine this is really working,” Bruce said with eyes glued to the screen.  “Do you see what I see?”

Tony spared enough concentration to glance down for a second.  “No, not even close.  I see so much more than that.”  He could feel the sweat starting to gather in the hair on the back of his neck.

After another few minutes of silent watching, Bruce’s eyes lit up.  “We have a match!”

“95% certainty,” Tony said for him.  “The Bellagio Fountains.”

“It is underneath them?  What’s under the fountain?”

Tony shrugged.  “Nothing.  A whole lot of water and some pumps, I suppose.”

Bruce gasped.  “The fountain _is_ the bomb.  He’s going to use it to disperse whatever gamma concoction he’s cooked up.”

“Holy shit,” Tony said.  “If he does that, this whole area will be contaminated for years.”

“Decades, maybe,” Bruce groaned.  “And who knows how far it can spread.  The Hoover Dam isn’t that far from here.”  He squinted at the screen.  “How do I even get down there?”

“Hold on,” Tony said.  A minute later, he was feeding the blueprints and schematics of the fountain’s control rooms to Bruce’s computer screen.

Tony landed the helicopter as discreetly as he could at his hanger at the airport, but he was sure that Killian would be monitoring air traffic control.  But they didn’t run into any trouble transferring from the helicopter to the black Escalade awaiting them.  The leather seats were cool and the dark-tinted windows dimmed the harsh glare of sunlight on the concrete runway as they pulled out of the hanger. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Tony said one final time before he turned onto the freeway towards the Strip.  “I’ve engineered my fair share of weaponry and I probably have just as much of a chance of shutting this thing down as you do.”

Bruce smiled ruefully.  “I have my reasons for not wanting Killian to succeed.  I don’t want him to hurt anyone else.”  He grew quiet, and Tony glanced over to see his smile had failed.  “Tony,” he said, “I can’t transform with people around.  They’ll die if I do.”

“I didn’t.”

“I can’t risk it.  You can’t let that happen.”

Tony looked over again.  “I’ll do everything in my power to keep that from happening.”

Bruce nodded once, and Tony turned his attention back to the road.

****

Being Tony Stark had very distinct privileges and advantages, like being able to bribe the janitors into letting him into the pumping equipment room.  He knew better than to ask the engineers because he didn’t have enough time to deduce exactly who was on Killian’s payroll, so it was safest to assume everyone was.

Tony led the way down the metal staircase to a wide, concrete room.  Green and white pipes lined the ceiling, leading from huge copper pressurization tanks to the artificial lake above them.  The comforting thrum of machinery was so loud that Tony could feel it in his chest, and he had to concentrate to hear Bruce’s voice.

“It should be pretty big,” Bruce started to say, but then his eyes found a tank made of bright silver metal, out of place with the rest.  “There?”

The tank was at least eight feet tall and wider than the Hulk could wrap his arms around.  Tony ran his hands along the sides, feeling for a seam in the metal that would indicate a control panel.  He felt it, nearly invisible, and pressed his fingers against the edge to release the pressure plate.

“Bruce!”

He pushed Tony’s hands aside so he could squint at the control panel. 

“Look familiar?” Tony asked.

Bruce glanced at him with wary eyes.  “I don’t know yet,” he said as he dug into his bag for the tools he had brought and came up with a screwdriver and a pair of needle nose pliers.

Tony was enraptured by Bruce’s nimble fingers as he found the hidden catches on the faceplate and lifted it away to reveal the wiring beneath.  To Tony, it looked like a processor and a jumble of wires, but by the way that Bruce was tapping the pliers against his chin, he saw something else. 

They were both too distracted, and the white noise of the water pumps drowned out the sound of boots on concrete, so the first sign that they had company was a deep voice shouting, “Hey!  What are you doing?”

Both of the scientists’ heads snapped up to see a middle-aged man in a yellow button-down shirt staring at them in shock and holding a radio in a shaking hand.  Tony opened his mouth to make up an explanation, but the man was already turned around and scrambling towards the stairs, shouting into his radio.

“There are trespassers in the pumping room!  I need security!”

Bruce, his hands buried in wires, looked at Tony.

“Shit, yeah, you keep going.  I’ll…lock the door or something.”

Tony ran after the man, mentally calling the armor to him.  There wasn’t a door at the bottom of the stairs, so he raced up to the door at the top.   But when he got to the top of the staircase, he reached the door to pull it closed, just to have it ripped so violently from his hands that the hinges broke and it was flung away.  Standing at the top of the stairs was Killian.

He cocked his head and regarded Tony.  “I thought I killed you.”

“Starks don’t like to stay dead,” Tony replied.

A broad hand shot out and grabbed Tony by the throat, hauling him up and out of the stairwell and into the open air.  They were in a side service corridor, on the bank of the lake not visible from the street.  But Tony didn’t have much time to gain his bearings before he was thrust head-first into the water.  Killian’s hand was tight around his throat, and Tony scrabbled uselessly against it, but at least the pressure didn’t allow Tony to gasp and inhale water.

But the frigid water filled his sinuses and panic set in as his lungs ached for air and his vision dimmed.  He screamed, silently, on every electronic frequency he could.  Then as he felt his strength ebb and Killian’s hand tighten even more in response, sudden pressure starting at his wrist and moving over his hands and fingers and up his arm made him open eyes he hadn’t realized had closed.  His brain lit up with the presence of the armor as he realized that it was plunging into the water, piece by piece, and encasing his body.  He raised his hand with his last coherent thought and fired the repulsor at full blast.

The energy beam caught Killian square in the chest, and surprise force knocked his grip loose as he was thrown against the stairwell door.  Tony shot out of the water, balancing in the air on one boot as the rest of the armor flew towards him and interlocked over his limbs, over his chest and up his back.  The helmet snapped into place last, and he flipped the visor down with a nod of his head.

The infrared sensors showed Killian’s core temperature rising to unhuman levels as he watched Tony hovering before him.

“I wondered how you survived,” Killian spat out.  “How you dug yourself out of that basement.”

“I didn’t dig,” Tony’s electronic voice replied.  “I flew.”

And then he took off, out across the water.  He wanted Killian to follow, to draw him away from Bruce and the bomb, so he took it slow across the eight-acre lake.  But, as he glanced behind him, he saw Killian running faster than he thought was possible around the perimeter of the lake, leaping barriers and fences as if they were hardly there. 

“When did you become American Ninja Warrior,” Tony muttered to himself as he sped up to keep his distance.  But Killian just sped up, too.

Tony fired a repulsor blast at him, but Killian dodged it and it glanced off an iron guardrail in just in front of a group of tourists.  The street was already full of early revelers, and the screams alerted more of the people on the sidewalk and they turned to point at Tony as he whizzed by. 

Still, even though Killian was _fast_ , he was still running—which meant that whatever his powers were, at least he couldn’t fly.  Tony took a hard left and shot across the street, pulling vertical along the mini Eiffel Tower where people gaped at him from the pool. 

Killian followed.  He climbed up a taxi and then leapt from car to car across the street.  One leg of the tower straddled the building below, and climbed it as easily as a ladder, leaving handprints of red hot metal cooling on the iron bars.  Tony slowed as he approached the restaurant at the top and wrenched an iron bar free from the statue.  When Killian came within range, he swung with the power of the suit behind him.

But Killian merely held his hand out and the heat of it warped and malformed the metal before he even grabbed it. He twisted his hand and the girder shriek as it curled.  Tony lost his grip in pure shock and it was wrenched away and thrown down to the screeching crowds.  Killian laughed and pulled another bar from the structure, heated it white-hot and threw it at Tony.

He could dodge it in the air easily, but that left it to land somewhere in the gathering crowd, so he had to jet over to catch it before it could hit the sidewalk and anyone below.  He had barely set it down when three more flaming girder rained down.

The crowd started screaming and running, blocking traffic in both directions as some people ran from the fight while others ran towards it.

“This is not a show!” Tony projected to the crowd as loudly as the speakers would go.  “I repeat: THIS IS NOT A GODDAM SHOW. RUN AWAY!”

“Come on, Tony, good boy, play fetch!” Killian taunted from his precarious position on top of the Eiffel Tower Restaurant.  Tony could see the people inside running for the stairs, but his heart dropped as the side Killian was hanging onto suddenly buckled.  The top third of the building list to the side.   The middle collapsed in on itself, and Tony could barely hear the screams of the restaurant patrons over the screech of metal tearing and giving away.

Killian hung on with his arms and legs wrapped around a support beam until the building settled.  He seemed shaken.  In his rage, he hadn’t really expected the building to come down so easily.  Tony ignored him and focused on the people evacuating from the 11th story restaurant.  The wait staff were doing a fine job of ushering most people down the emergency stairs, but a few panicked people were crowded near the blown-out windows.  Quickly, he took a pair of children in his arms and flew them down, followed by their mother. 

A shrill, sharp scream made Tony groan as his attention was turned back to Killian.  The man had recovered his footing, and his hand was planted firmly on the support girder he had clung to moments before.  The metal beneath his hand glowed red and white, spreading as he visibly pumped his life force through luminescent veins and into the liquefying metal.  Drops of superheated iron splashed on the sidewalk below.  The building began to groan again as the weight of the structure bore down on the melting girder. 

“Let’s see what kind of hero you want to be, Tony,” Killian said.  “What are you out here for?  These morons?  These ANTS?  Or are you here for revenge?  Because I know you’re nothing but a distraction.  So first I’m going to drop this building, and then I’m going to go kill whoever you have messing with my bomb.”

Killian’s eyes glowed like the sun as he pumped the last of his energy into the molten metal.  He leapt down as the beam folded and the top of the half-scale Eiffel Tower toppled over.  Tony’s scanners said there were people in the observation deck at the top, so he allowed himself barely a thought towards Bruce before rocketing to catch the platform and level it out as safely as it could and lower it gently to the ground.  The people inside—only  a handful, but still—were holding each other and weeping.

The rest of the Tower lay slumped over itself on the sidewalk, with some broken pieces of steel and rebar littering the street.  The police were there, now, with blockades set up at either end of the block, but that didn’t help the people still huddling in doorways and behind crushed cars.  Tony looked around and there, in front of the ruins of the tower was Killian, still glowing with dispelling energy, but he seemed rooted to his spot in rage.

Because, right in front of him, casual as could be, stood Bruce Banner.

Without a word, Bruce took a silver cylinder, trailing broken wires at each end, and rolled it to Killian’s feet. 

“You’re not going to blow anyone up today,” Bruce said.

Killian was too enraged to speak.  He was so angry that the thin fabric of his shirt smoldered and burst into flames.  It fell apart to reveal twin dragon tattoos twisting their ways across Killian’s back and sides and shoulders.  The tattoos radiated heat like lines of lava tracing his body.

“I think you took the tramp stamp too far,” Tony coughed, but he was completely ignored.

Killian opened his mouth and a thick plume of flame erupted forth.  Tony stumbled backwards because he could feel the heat even through the satellite-grade titanium-gold alloy suit and every warning alarm went off at the same time.

But Bruce just barely raised his left arm to shield his eyes before he was engulfed by the fire. 

“Bruce!” Tony screamed, and primed the repulsors, ready to grab whatever was left of Bruce and pull him from the fire.

But then, a giant green shape emerged from the flames, bellowing with such force that Tony could see the flames pushed back ever so slightly by the rush of air.  The Hulk’s long arm easily closed the distance between him and Killian and the rough green hand closed tightly around Killian’s throat, abruptly cutting off the fire’s oxygen supply.  Killian stared up, scrabbling uselessly because even though his super-powered fingernails left charred claw marks, the hand did not loosen.

With a soft grunt, Hulk closed his hand tightly and crushed Killian’s neck.  He let go and the body fell to the sidewalk in a heap.

Tony started to warn, “Watch out!  He heals really—“

But his warnings weren’t needed because the Hulk took Killian’s head and twisted it off like a chicken.

Then silence, as Killian’s blood poured into the gutter, and Tony flipped up his visor so he could look into the Hulk’s eyes.  The giant was breathing so hard that he could feel the air against his face like a breeze.

“So the bomb wasn’t a problem, eh, Big Guy?” Tony said first because it looked like the Hulk was an even worse conversationalist than Bruce.

“No problem,” he rumbled, flicking the little cylinder towards Tony.  Tony’s scanners identified it as the detonator.  They were still going to have to get a crew to clean it up, but at least the Bellagio Fountain wouldn’t be spewing gamma radiation any time soon. 

Tony looked up into the startling green eyes regarding him.  The Hulk lowered himself so he was resting on his haunches and his knuckles, getting down to Tony’s level as far as he could, so Tony popped the locks on the helmet and pulled it off.  The Hulk smiled.

His eyes…They were large and limpid and Tony could see himself as clearly as looking in a green bottle-glass mirror.  He looked good.  But, beneath that was something else, elusive and breath-taking and dangerous in all the right ways.

The Hulk looked away first, and then Tony’s tunnel vision disappeared and he was all at once aware of the catastrophe around him.  There were still people cowering everywhere he looked, and the puddle of blood on the sidewalk and street was washing over the Hulk’s knuckles and Tony’s boots.  He took a step back, and then it was as if the entire Las Vegas Police Department popped up like Whac-A-Mole.

“Stay back!”

“Get on the ground!”

“Put your hands where I can see them!”

And there were guns and SWAT teams with assault rifles pointed at them. 

Tony’s hands shot into the air instinctively, which made the Hulk throw himself back in fright.  Those huge green eyes were searching for his, and Tony knew what was going on in his brain.  He was at the crux of fight or flight, and nothing was going to end well.

“GO!” Tony screamed at the Hulk.  “RUN!”

The Hulk took a step towards him and roared, which made the police duck down in their hiding spots again, but thankfully there were no gunshots.  But Tony held his ground. 

“Just go,” Tony said, in normal volume.  “Because if you don’t run,” and a lump formed in his throat so quickly that he choked on it and his voice broke, “if you don’t run _right now_ you might never be free again.”

That did it.  When the Hulk blinked again, his eyes were dull as rock and he launched himself into the sky without even a backwards glance at Tony, leaving a shallow crater of broken pavement behind.

The sound of gun cocking brought Tony’s attention back to the present.  He hadn’t noticed he’d been staring at the empty space where Hulk had disappeared into the desert horizon.

The officers were closing in.

“Hey, hey now,” Tony started.  He pulled a pair of Wayfarers out of a compartment on his thigh and slid them on.  It was bright, even for a winter afternoon.  “Please form a disorderly line for autographs.”

****

Tony swirled the ice in his scotch as he looked out the window onto the darkened fountain.  After the commotion with the police had been sorted out, he had been given the Chairman Suite at the Bellagio so he could remain close to the investigation and supervise the removal of the remnants of the bomb.

Tony had been sure, absolutely positive, that he was going to be arrested and held at least until he could bail himself out, and then get everything sorted.  But it seemed as though having a couple thousand eye witnesses armed with cellphones—including several police officers—all claiming that you saved them from a fire-breathing monster…well it kept him out of a cell for the night.

It was quiet.   Some of the Paris resort had been evacuated as well, and the revelry moved further down the street.  For all the times Tony had been the Vegas, he had never seen it so eerily dark and still.  Some of the emergency vehicles still had their lights on, but the strobes were a soft glow compared to the usual blinding neon. 

Tony kept the room, dark, too, because he was supposed to be resting.  He had asked to rest, afterwards, and they had been so obliging to give him room.  Nothing but the best for the hero.

So he stared out the window and wondered where Bruce was while absently swirling his drink and thinking about the weight of the detonator in his hand.  When they had finally allowed Tony to show them the bomb, they found two security guards knocked out and the bomb neatly disassembled.  He hadn’t just taken the detonator out.  He dismantled the entire bomb, just in case there was a secondary detonator or some other booby trap.  But there hadn’t been.

“No problem,” the ghost of a deep, booming voice said to him.

Tony had a feeling he was going to dream of that voice for a while.  He took a deep gulp so he could pretend the burn in his throat was from the alcohol.   He collapsed onto the couch, not even into a bed, and dozed deeply until the pop of fireworks in the distance roused him. His heart hammered.  Not a panic attack, but enough for him to glance at the armor standing by and pour another drink.  His hands were shaking. 

Tony headed towards one of the palatial bedrooms, intent on drinking himself into a coma and hopefully avoiding the repercussions of the day’s action when there was a knock at the door. He barely held onto his drink as he jumped in surprise. 

“Isn’t there supposed to be a butler or something,” Tony grumbled as he stomped over to the door.  On better thought, he paused before opening it.  The very last thing he wanted was to deal with some excited detective or reporter.  Better to let him sleep.

But then the knock sounded again, tentative and unsure.

Tony opened the door.  Standing there in ripped pants and a What Happens in Vegas… shirt, was Bruce Banner.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Bruce said softly when neither of them moved.

Tony grabbed his arm and the other man gasped when he was yanked inside and the door was slammed behind him.  But he held on tight when Tony pulled him close and wrapped forge-strong arms around the deceptively thin shoulders.  And maybe he was crying, but so was Bruce, and they had seen a lot of worse shit than that today. 

“I thought you were gone!” Tony said, but his breath was stolen by lips clumsily pressing against his.

“You told me to go,” Bruce said when he pulled back.

But Tony wasn’t going to let it go at that.  He wrapped his fingers around Bruce’s hips and held him firm against his body.  “I don’t want you going anywhere.”

“I was afraid.”

“So was I.”

“It’s for the best,” Bruce insisted.

“Probably,” Tony said, but he lunged for Bruce’s mouth before they could continue.  He tasted like fear and metal and blood.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Bruce whispered.

Tony held on tighter.  “You don’t have to.  Besides I already have a name for our new company."

 

Resilient

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very much for reading this story. I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
